How to create a powerful game achievement system
I confess, I used to have a particular dislike for game achievements. Now it’s hard for me to remember where my legs grow from, but I do not rule out that due to the terrible implementation in most games. Whoever remembers the old one is out of sight, so we just admit an undeniable fact: game design has evolved greatly since then.
Although game achievements should not be the main goal in your game, this does not prevent them from significantly influencing the player's behavior and his involvement. A long time ago, on one of the large projects, I was given a large-scale task: to create a powerful system of game achievements. Over the next 30 months, I, like a slave in the galleys, spent designing and testing various achievement systems in hundreds of games. I was swallowed by endless data processing: game comments, posts on forums, direct communication with players, changes in game ratings. I made and continue to make a bunch of mistakes, but I also learned some invaluable lessons. And this knowledge can not be kept secret ...
Without losing time, let's weigh the pros and cons of complex achievements.
')
FOR: longer hold in the game; the player’s skill is pumped higher; there is additional motivation to overcome the limitations.
AGAINST: weak players will not be able to earn achievements and lose interest in the game; the player has to perform actions that are not always interesting for him; it takes a lot of grind; not matching rewards to time spent; require large energy costs in real life; high dependence on other players in multiplayer games.
The first thing I understand is that the harder it is to earn an achivka, the harder it is to design it correctly. The answer to the question about the expediency of complex achievements is obvious.
Repeating the same action many times with little or no change - it even sounds dull. You, probably, often noticed such common achievements “to kill 1000 opponents” or “to win 10 battles”. They are not difficult to design, but they are effective when you need additional encouragement of the player.
The main problem is that game designers often underestimate how much players will have to sweat to get them. Most often, the player will experience a negative experience that is likely to affect the entire system, making it less exciting.
There is one trick: to link these achievements with the player’s natural actions. If he will grind in his pleasure for the sake of other goals, why not award him with an achivka. Best of all, it will take a ride in multiplayer games - time flies there unnoticed and the player is permanently involved in the process.
As an unfortunate example, I well remembered how in one game they gave an achievement for its threefold passing. Why introduce such a meaningless achievement, if every time something passes through the game, nothing changes? Does anyone want to go through the game just for the sake of achivka?
The key question you should ask yourself before introducing such achivok in your game: will actions aimed at gaining achivka be considered natural behavior if there were no achivka? Not? Then the player must change his behavior. Will behavior change lead to a positive experience? In case of excessive grind, the answer is almost always NO.
Game Designer thinks: “I will create an achivka to rally players for the benefit of common goals.” We wanted the best, but it turned out as always. People are selfish creatures and often think only of their own benefits. Therefore, such achievements force the Allies to exploit, which negatively affects both the player’s experience and his reputation in the game.
When a player is given a task, first of all he thinks: “how to solve it as quickly as possible and get the coveted reward as quickly as possible”. And this happens in 99% of cases.
You need to think carefully about how to make achievements that will give the player the opportunity to experience a new positive experience, increase his reputation and unite allies. Layfkhak - give out achivki for actions that the player in any case will do.
Sad as it may seem, the players prefer effective actions to achieve their goals. Learn to create unbreakable “efficiency + fun” communication.
If the game has an achive “go through several levels without having passed away”, then the player will be inclined to start the game again each time he dies. And each time the game will deliver less and less pleasure.
If the task is “kill 10 enemies in 3 minutes,” then the player will not just run and shoot at his own pleasure. Now he will join the strong team and will finish off rivals. Well, if you need to "kill 10 opponents without damage," then the player will track down the noobs and punish them.
When you design an achivka, do not forget to ask yourself one time each time: “Will actions aimed at obtaining it be fun or rather tedious?”.
Tasks achivok - additional pleasure for the player, the satisfaction of the gameplay, recognition of other players. But game designers diligently write muddy requirements for achivkam, which kills their value and coolness in front of other players.
Suppose you are playing at the highest level of difficulty and have killed 10 enemies without losing a single HP. You are guaranteed the recognition of other players, if there is an achivka “to kill 10 enemies at the highest level of complexity without losing lives”. You will not get a drop of recognition, if in the same situation you get the achievement “kill 10 enemies without losing lives”. Maybe you came in powerful armor at the weakest level of difficulty, and you just could not get through.
Very precisely formulate the tasks for gaining achievements, so that players could not exploit them and did not kill the value of the whole system.
Everyone remembers in games such situations that caused a hurricane of emotions, forced us to behave strangely and poke fingers at the screen with the words: “Well, you didn’t see, huh ?!”. In such situations, the player wants to share the received sensations with others, and the game designer will want to entrust the achivka to these sensations.
And here we are faced with a problem ... as soon as the game designer attached an achivka to this event, for the players this turned into a carefully planned task. The player is no longer relaxed, the situation is too predictable.
On the other hand, excessive coincidence is also not good. Doing crazy tricks on a skateboard in the game “Tony Hawk” is cool because the player has complete control over the situation and it is difficult for objective reasons. But if suddenly a player needs to hit his head exactly on a moving target with very inaccurate weapons and at an unrealistically long distance, then it smacks of a random number.
If you have completed the game at a high level of difficulty and received an achivka for it, then you should automatically receive the same achivka for a simple difficulty level. Grief-designers often force players to go through the game again on a simpler level of difficulty just for the sake of achivka, and this, as you can guess, is absolutely pointless.
When an achievement system is introduced into an already existing game, this often leads to a slight drop in the rating of this game. Many can argue or study a bunch of theories on this topic, my point of view: “not all people are the same”. Some play for fun, others for achievements and see the game as an obstacle. Most of the rating of the game does not kill the system itself achievements, but its poor implementation.
A huge plus of achievement systems - you can manipulate players and force them to perform the tasks we need, which players can lose sight of without the presence of achievements.
If the game has an interesting but optional quest that may not be noticed by the player, then game designers have a lot of problems when adjusting the gameplay. But if you wave your magic wand and build in the game an achivka for this quest, the situation will instantly change. The same works in the case when our game is not very well turned out some piece of the gameplay, which can spoil the impression of the whole game. Then we do not make any achievements for the passage of this unpleasant segment, so that players can slip through it imperceptibly.
For a player who plays for the sake of achievement, reaching the point of no return for an achievement will be tantamount to death. Suppose there are some conditions for getting an Achievement: “not to kill a certain monster” or “not to use a certain weapon”. Most likely, the player will restart the game if he has violated one of the conditions in the campaign for achivkoy.
This situation is easy to imagine when a player gets the task “kill without taking damage”. This is the same as saying to the player: “you have 1HP”. Then he will die and restart the game every time he received any damage.
The situation is complicated when you need to get a time-limited achievement. In the old games the player was often pushed slowly to death if he was stupid. But there are monstrous examples! The game “Shenmue” shows GAME OVER if it is too long to play. Imagine? Play yourself quietly for 8 hours, enjoy and suddenly get in the face of GAME OVER. Instead, a game designer would have to break the game into levels and offer the player to go through some of them in a limited time, rewarding him with an achievement for successfully passing each such level. As the saying goes, and the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe.
And I also like the achivka “died 100 times”, not only is it a record of the player’s failures, so also the perpetual motion machine. He died - you want to restart the game, not dead - you want to die for the sake of achievement.
You play in the heat of the moment in an interesting toy, then a small window pops up, notifying about “how to get the treasured achivka”, is preserved and ... even desponded. And how now to get achivka? Such a system forces players to always be in all weapons, play cautiously, in suspense. Is it now possible to call the game entertainment?
You should always be given the opportunity to return and get the missed achivka. Or, alternatively, cancel it in the achievements section. For example, each achivka in “World of Warcraft” can be obtained alone for any race or class, and it will never become unattainable or necessarily require other participants to receive.
“Prince of Persia” crossed all conceivable and inconceivable boundaries when he began to reward with achivka for viewing the introductory trailer. In general, this topic is as old as the world, but it is still practiced. Very simple achievements are not really called achievements, they are ordinary records of current events.
Simple accomplishments are as meaningless as the way they are received. The number of achievements has the same value as the easiest way to achieve this value. It turns out that very simple achievements inflate the entire system, devaluing normal achievements in this system. Each achivka must have some meaning and carry a certain value.
As a game designer, your task is to introduce players to the achievement system and create in them the feeling that they are directly involved in the system. It is necessary to keep a balance between achievable achievable and complex enough that all players have value and weight in the eyes of the players.
Ideally, most players can get most of the players, but only the most dedicated fighters will be able to collect the full set and get a big reward. Rewards attract players and add some motivation to fight.
Rewarding the choice of a positive way of passing the game and depriving the reward, if you decide to be a villain, is fundamentally wrong. Why, then, in the game the opportunity to be a villain, if the achivka hints that the awards for dissent do not expect you.
There are also rewards for a certain set of abilities or for pumping a certain weapon. All that you achieve with this is to deprive the player of the desire to make decisions. At least, the player no longer sees the point. The exit here can serve as a gradual reward for specific actions that can be performed regardless of the chosen path.
For example, you have a task: to run a marathon for a team of villains or for good guys. Bad game designers in a similar situation give out to achivka if you run a marathon for a team of good guys, and good game designers will reward you for the fact that you started a marathon, ran the whole distance, or took some kind of prize.
Imagine that you are playing a new puzzle game for the first time and got an achievement for quickly coping with a challenge. Playing the second time, you already know how to get it, because remember how it was last time, and just repeat the action that gives the result. This is not fun, does not motivate and does not give any positive experience at all. The significance of the game is lost after the player encounters similar levels or tasks in other games.
There are such achivki who have not written what needs to be done to obtain them. Sometimes they write something like “look up,” and nobody says where to see why and what it will give. There is absolutely no point in them, except to puzzle the player for a few seconds. The only ones who will be delighted with such achivkas are people who do not know what achievements are and why they are in the game.
Most players will not get most of the players prepared for them. How they will react to this and what justification they will see is very important for the entire achievement system. If it is incredibly difficult to get an achievement for objective reasons, then the player will give up when trying to earn it, but he will respect the task itself and the people who have coped with it.
In “Guitar Hero” there is an award for 5 stars on “Through the Fire and Flames”. The player understands that he is not going to get this achivka now, because the song is very heavy, and his level is not so high. But those who received this achievement, the player will be very respected.
Although game achievements should not be the main goal in your game, this does not prevent them from significantly influencing the player's behavior and his involvement. A long time ago, on one of the large projects, I was given a large-scale task: to create a powerful system of game achievements. Over the next 30 months, I, like a slave in the galleys, spent designing and testing various achievement systems in hundreds of games. I was swallowed by endless data processing: game comments, posts on forums, direct communication with players, changes in game ratings. I made and continue to make a bunch of mistakes, but I also learned some invaluable lessons. And this knowledge can not be kept secret ...
Lesson 1. Should achievements be challenging?
Without losing time, let's weigh the pros and cons of complex achievements.
')
FOR: longer hold in the game; the player’s skill is pumped higher; there is additional motivation to overcome the limitations.
AGAINST: weak players will not be able to earn achievements and lose interest in the game; the player has to perform actions that are not always interesting for him; it takes a lot of grind; not matching rewards to time spent; require large energy costs in real life; high dependence on other players in multiplayer games.
The first thing I understand is that the harder it is to earn an achivka, the harder it is to design it correctly. The answer to the question about the expediency of complex achievements is obvious.
Lesson 2. Grind or not grind for the sake of achivka?
Repeating the same action many times with little or no change - it even sounds dull. You, probably, often noticed such common achievements “to kill 1000 opponents” or “to win 10 battles”. They are not difficult to design, but they are effective when you need additional encouragement of the player.
The main problem is that game designers often underestimate how much players will have to sweat to get them. Most often, the player will experience a negative experience that is likely to affect the entire system, making it less exciting.
There is one trick: to link these achievements with the player’s natural actions. If he will grind in his pleasure for the sake of other goals, why not award him with an achivka. Best of all, it will take a ride in multiplayer games - time flies there unnoticed and the player is permanently involved in the process.
As an unfortunate example, I well remembered how in one game they gave an achievement for its threefold passing. Why introduce such a meaningless achievement, if every time something passes through the game, nothing changes? Does anyone want to go through the game just for the sake of achivka?
The key question you should ask yourself before introducing such achivok in your game: will actions aimed at gaining achivka be considered natural behavior if there were no achivka? Not? Then the player must change his behavior. Will behavior change lead to a positive experience? In case of excessive grind, the answer is almost always NO.
Lesson 3. How does player behavior change in multiplayer games?
Game Designer thinks: “I will create an achivka to rally players for the benefit of common goals.” We wanted the best, but it turned out as always. People are selfish creatures and often think only of their own benefits. Therefore, such achievements force the Allies to exploit, which negatively affects both the player’s experience and his reputation in the game.
When a player is given a task, first of all he thinks: “how to solve it as quickly as possible and get the coveted reward as quickly as possible”. And this happens in 99% of cases.
You need to think carefully about how to make achievements that will give the player the opportunity to experience a new positive experience, increase his reputation and unite allies. Layfkhak - give out achivki for actions that the player in any case will do.
Lesson 4. Efficiency or fun?
Sad as it may seem, the players prefer effective actions to achieve their goals. Learn to create unbreakable “efficiency + fun” communication.
If the game has an achive “go through several levels without having passed away”, then the player will be inclined to start the game again each time he dies. And each time the game will deliver less and less pleasure.
If the task is “kill 10 enemies in 3 minutes,” then the player will not just run and shoot at his own pleasure. Now he will join the strong team and will finish off rivals. Well, if you need to "kill 10 opponents without damage," then the player will track down the noobs and punish them.
When you design an achivka, do not forget to ask yourself one time each time: “Will actions aimed at obtaining it be fun or rather tedious?”.
Lesson 5. How to get recognition?
Tasks achivok - additional pleasure for the player, the satisfaction of the gameplay, recognition of other players. But game designers diligently write muddy requirements for achivkam, which kills their value and coolness in front of other players.
Suppose you are playing at the highest level of difficulty and have killed 10 enemies without losing a single HP. You are guaranteed the recognition of other players, if there is an achivka “to kill 10 enemies at the highest level of complexity without losing lives”. You will not get a drop of recognition, if in the same situation you get the achievement “kill 10 enemies without losing lives”. Maybe you came in powerful armor at the weakest level of difficulty, and you just could not get through.
Very precisely formulate the tasks for gaining achievements, so that players could not exploit them and did not kill the value of the whole system.
Lesson 6. Random or predictable?
Everyone remembers in games such situations that caused a hurricane of emotions, forced us to behave strangely and poke fingers at the screen with the words: “Well, you didn’t see, huh ?!”. In such situations, the player wants to share the received sensations with others, and the game designer will want to entrust the achivka to these sensations.
And here we are faced with a problem ... as soon as the game designer attached an achivka to this event, for the players this turned into a carefully planned task. The player is no longer relaxed, the situation is too predictable.
On the other hand, excessive coincidence is also not good. Doing crazy tricks on a skateboard in the game “Tony Hawk” is cool because the player has complete control over the situation and it is difficult for objective reasons. But if suddenly a player needs to hit his head exactly on a moving target with very inaccurate weapons and at an unrealistically long distance, then it smacks of a random number.
Lesson 7. One or two?
If you have completed the game at a high level of difficulty and received an achivka for it, then you should automatically receive the same achivka for a simple difficulty level. Grief-designers often force players to go through the game again on a simpler level of difficulty just for the sake of achivka, and this, as you can guess, is absolutely pointless.
Lesson 8. How does the achievement system affect the rating of a game?
When an achievement system is introduced into an already existing game, this often leads to a slight drop in the rating of this game. Many can argue or study a bunch of theories on this topic, my point of view: “not all people are the same”. Some play for fun, others for achievements and see the game as an obstacle. Most of the rating of the game does not kill the system itself achievements, but its poor implementation.
A huge plus of achievement systems - you can manipulate players and force them to perform the tasks we need, which players can lose sight of without the presence of achievements.
If the game has an interesting but optional quest that may not be noticed by the player, then game designers have a lot of problems when adjusting the gameplay. But if you wave your magic wand and build in the game an achivka for this quest, the situation will instantly change. The same works in the case when our game is not very well turned out some piece of the gameplay, which can spoil the impression of the whole game. Then we do not make any achievements for the passage of this unpleasant segment, so that players can slip through it imperceptibly.
Lesson 9. How far can you go in crazy achievements?
For a player who plays for the sake of achievement, reaching the point of no return for an achievement will be tantamount to death. Suppose there are some conditions for getting an Achievement: “not to kill a certain monster” or “not to use a certain weapon”. Most likely, the player will restart the game if he has violated one of the conditions in the campaign for achivkoy.
This situation is easy to imagine when a player gets the task “kill without taking damage”. This is the same as saying to the player: “you have 1HP”. Then he will die and restart the game every time he received any damage.
The situation is complicated when you need to get a time-limited achievement. In the old games the player was often pushed slowly to death if he was stupid. But there are monstrous examples! The game “Shenmue” shows GAME OVER if it is too long to play. Imagine? Play yourself quietly for 8 hours, enjoy and suddenly get in the face of GAME OVER. Instead, a game designer would have to break the game into levels and offer the player to go through some of them in a limited time, rewarding him with an achievement for successfully passing each such level. As the saying goes, and the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe.
And I also like the achivka “died 100 times”, not only is it a record of the player’s failures, so also the perpetual motion machine. He died - you want to restart the game, not dead - you want to die for the sake of achievement.
Lesson 10: Save ... burn in hell!
You play in the heat of the moment in an interesting toy, then a small window pops up, notifying about “how to get the treasured achivka”, is preserved and ... even desponded. And how now to get achivka? Such a system forces players to always be in all weapons, play cautiously, in suspense. Is it now possible to call the game entertainment?
You should always be given the opportunity to return and get the missed achivka. Or, alternatively, cancel it in the achievements section. For example, each achivka in “World of Warcraft” can be obtained alone for any race or class, and it will never become unattainable or necessarily require other participants to receive.
Lesson 11. Too simple achievements.
“Prince of Persia” crossed all conceivable and inconceivable boundaries when he began to reward with achivka for viewing the introductory trailer. In general, this topic is as old as the world, but it is still practiced. Very simple achievements are not really called achievements, they are ordinary records of current events.
Simple accomplishments are as meaningless as the way they are received. The number of achievements has the same value as the easiest way to achieve this value. It turns out that very simple achievements inflate the entire system, devaluing normal achievements in this system. Each achivka must have some meaning and carry a certain value.
As a game designer, your task is to introduce players to the achievement system and create in them the feeling that they are directly involved in the system. It is necessary to keep a balance between achievable achievable and complex enough that all players have value and weight in the eyes of the players.
Ideally, most players can get most of the players, but only the most dedicated fighters will be able to collect the full set and get a big reward. Rewards attract players and add some motivation to fight.
Lesson 12. Rewards for moving along the intended path.
Rewarding the choice of a positive way of passing the game and depriving the reward, if you decide to be a villain, is fundamentally wrong. Why, then, in the game the opportunity to be a villain, if the achivka hints that the awards for dissent do not expect you.
There are also rewards for a certain set of abilities or for pumping a certain weapon. All that you achieve with this is to deprive the player of the desire to make decisions. At least, the player no longer sees the point. The exit here can serve as a gradual reward for specific actions that can be performed regardless of the chosen path.
For example, you have a task: to run a marathon for a team of villains or for good guys. Bad game designers in a similar situation give out to achivka if you run a marathon for a team of good guys, and good game designers will reward you for the fact that you started a marathon, ran the whole distance, or took some kind of prize.
Lesson 13. Remember and repeat!
Imagine that you are playing a new puzzle game for the first time and got an achievement for quickly coping with a challenge. Playing the second time, you already know how to get it, because remember how it was last time, and just repeat the action that gives the result. This is not fun, does not motivate and does not give any positive experience at all. The significance of the game is lost after the player encounters similar levels or tasks in other games.
Lesson 14. Secret achievements.
There are such achivki who have not written what needs to be done to obtain them. Sometimes they write something like “look up,” and nobody says where to see why and what it will give. There is absolutely no point in them, except to puzzle the player for a few seconds. The only ones who will be delighted with such achivkas are people who do not know what achievements are and why they are in the game.
Lesson 15. Arguments.
Most players will not get most of the players prepared for them. How they will react to this and what justification they will see is very important for the entire achievement system. If it is incredibly difficult to get an achievement for objective reasons, then the player will give up when trying to earn it, but he will respect the task itself and the people who have coped with it.
In “Guitar Hero” there is an award for 5 stars on “Through the Fire and Flames”. The player understands that he is not going to get this achivka now, because the song is very heavy, and his level is not so high. But those who received this achievement, the player will be very respected.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/255893/
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