It sounds like achievements might be coming soon.  I thought it might be fun to talk about how this could be structured.

My vote is for bronze, silver, gold, and  platinum level achievements (like Xbox, I guess).

Achievements could be in different areas:

• Community/Social
• Playing Games (sub categories: standard, team, tournament, etc.)
• Designing Maps
• <anything else?>

Some examples for the community category:

• Community Bronze -> Make your first post.  Upload a profile image.
• Community Silver -> Make 100 posts.  1 year Member.  Buy a gift subscription.  Become a premium member. 
• Community Gold -> Make 1000 posts.  5 year Member
• Community Platinum -> 10 year member.

I think it might also be fun to have some unlockable things to encourage exploration, and provide progressive disclosure of advanced features.   Maybe you can't play yellow (intermediate) maps until you get some minimum # of achievements, and similar for red (expert).  Other possible unlockables:

• create new games
• maybe a second level for free members that increases the # of games they can play, or gives a small amount of vacation time
• ????

I am not a big fan of the Xbox Bronze Silver Gold model.

I like the Plants VS Zombies model where each achievement is unlocked independently rather than upgraded. I also like the idea of the achievements each having a little bit of character.

The names could be creatively named for machine parts as an example.

Here is a quick list that I put together:

Finish one game
Finish 10 games
Finish 100 games…

Play a team game
Win a team game

Play in a tournament
Play in 10 tournaments
Win a tournament ?

Play a private game
Play a public game

Win one game
Win 10 games
Win 100 games…

Eliminate 100 opponents
Eliminate 1000 opponents

Play 10 different maps
Play 50 different maps
Play all the maps ?

Release a map
Have 100 games played on your map
Have 1000 games played on your map
Review a map

Reach #1 on the board championship
Reach #1 on the Global Rankings

Be selected for the review board

Post on the forum
Post 100 comments on the forum

There's an old thread or two with ideas that someone should dredge up..

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1443p5/Enhancement_Requests

Definately:

Top ten champion points (at any point)

Top ten Global Ranking (at any point)

Holds/Held top ranking on 5 boards, 10 boards, 20 boards etc.

Don't know how hard it is, but you could have moving achievements:

Most dangerous player (most kills at any given point) that changes when another more dangerous player comes along

or 

Highest (name stat) at any given moment

Score improvement achievements - like a +500 score! or something

I also want to throw out the idea of a "nemesis" achievement track. Achievements that are constructive to the gameplay but are a bit darker in nature. We've all played against players we love to hate...but boy do we respect them. Things like:

Most Stealthy (most kills on fog boards)
Most Deadly (Raptor already mentioned)
Best Assassin (most kills on assassin boards)
Best Solo player
Darkest Designer
Most unconventional
Most unpredictable


Less constructive (but still interesting):
Public enemy #1 (most "enemy" designations)
Most conniving (popular vote?)
Threadlocker (most # of locked threads)

Lots of good stuff here - (Interesting list Attila)

To sort of go along with Ratsy's "moving achievements" I'd like to see an enhancement of the ranking boards.

Top player in the last Month/6 Months/Year is obvious, but I'd like to see a way to rank players based on "groupings" of boards - e.g. best Simulgear, best Duel, best Team Player, best on Sports Themed boards, best lightning player, best on Yertlle boards, etc...

A top 10 list for each of these and a "badge" for the top one somewhere -

Raptor wrote:

I am not a big fan of the Xbox Bronze Silver Gold model.

I like the Plants VS Zombies model where each achievement is unlocked independently rather than upgraded. I also like the idea of the achievements each having a little bit of character.

I actually am not that familiar with the xbox model, so if it has achievements that move along paths from bronze to platinum, that is not what I was implying.

What I was suggesting is just that some achievements will be easy and some will be hard, and we ought to categorize and distinguish them in some way.  I think bronze, silver, gold, platinum provides about the right # of levels & their order is intuitive.  

It sounds like their are two broad categories of achievements:

• Achievements that once earned cannot be lost
• Achievements that you get temporarily.

Maybe we could use different terminology to better distinguish these.  For example Achivements could be things you earn and always keep.  Temporary awards could be Titles.

Ozyman wrote:

For example Achivements could be things you earn and always keep.  Temporary awards could be Titles.

I like

second the distinction between achievements and titles.

there can be 'progressions', which is what Ozy's point was trying for, but they can be done without the limitations of only 4 metals.  (like in Raptor's example you could continually increase games won - 5,10,25,50,100,500,1000,etc).

I like this because I feel it's better to have many small attainable rewards rather than a few with lots of space in between. (example: temple run 2, i currently can't complete the next objective without LOTS of time spent and can't obtain anything else until that one disappears)

Ozyman wrote:

It sounds like their are two broad categories of achievements:

• Achievements that once earned cannot be lost
• Achievements that you get temporarily.

Maybe we could use different terminology to better distinguish these.  For example Achivements could be things you earn and always keep.  Temporary awards could be Titles.

 

I'd like to see a third category of personal achievements: 

highest GR ever

highest points ever

most #1 board rankings

highest rank on 'X' board

etc.

I know you can divine most of these things elsewhere, but having them together helps a player compete with himself, which seems desirable, esp. for those unlikely to compete much for the big deal public achievements.

I started a page on the wiki to organize our thoughts:

http://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=general_features:achievement_system

Right now it has a big jumbled mix of ideas from all the posts in this thread.  It would be good if we could organize these better (group into categories, remove redundant ones, generalize specific honors.)

Tom, do you want more input or consensus on this?

Ozyman wrote:

It sounds like their are two broad categories of achievements:

• Achievements that once earned cannot be lost
• Achievements that you get temporarily.

Maybe we could use different terminology to better distinguish these.  For example Achivements could be things you earn and always keep.  Temporary awards could be Titles.

 

+1

M57 wrote:

Tom, do you want more input or consensus on this?

Yes please - the more ideas the better at this stage.

Would anyone be interested in working on achievement medal designs?

And - number of boards played - Explorer awards

tom wrote:

M57 wrote:

Tom, do you want more input or consensus on this?

Yes please - the more ideas the better at this stage.

Would anyone be interested in working on achievement medal designs?

I could take a swing at it.  PM me some constraints and your thoughts.

weathertop wrote:

second the distinction between achievements and titles.

there can be 'progressions', which is what Ozy's point was trying for, but they can be done without the limitations of only 4 metals.  (like in Raptor's example you could continually increase games won - 5,10,25,50,100,500,1000,etc).

I like this idea.  Use number and color coding to differentiate the award.  But perhaps its use could be expanded to other types of categories

FogMaster /Harbormaster/Captain - Record a win at different fog levels - top medal for all five. - or medals for multiple sets of wins at all fog levels. 

Historian/Academic-  Record a win on an "Advanced/Difficult" Board. Thresholds 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13..(Fibonacci)

MasterStrategist - Winning  games with negative luck-stats. The problem with this is that Standard Members don't have access to luck stats - but I was thinking that perhaps a basic luck stats chart (no graph) could be made available all members post-game. This could serve as a reminder to Standard members that Real-time Luck-Stats are available with Premium Membership. 

Has anyone suggested a list of Board-Specific awards? These should somehow show up in games, which could be tricky.. These types of awards could potentially clutter up the screen during a game.

Thanks for all the contributions so far. I've defined the following achievements:

Play Public Games
Play One Public Game
Play 10 Public Games
Play 100 Public Games
Play 1000 Public Games
Play 2500 Public Games
Play 5000 Public Games

Win Public Games
Win One Public Game
Win 10 Public Games
Win 100 Public Games
Win 1000 Public Games
Win 2500 Public Games
Win 5000 Public Games

Play Team Games
Play One Public Team Game
Play 10 Public Team Games
Play 100 Public Team Games
Play 1000 Public Team Games

Win Team Games
Win One Public Team Game
Win 10 Public Team Games
Win 100 Public Team Games
Win 1000 Public Team Games

Tournaments
Joined Tournament
Won Tournament
Won Team Tournament

Release Boards
Created a board
Release one board
Release 10 boards
Release 25 boards

Rate Boards
Rate a board
100% review record

Social
Post one comment on the discussion board
Post 10 comments on the discussion board
Post 100 comments on the discussion board
Post 1000 comments on the discussion board

Friends / Enemies
Friended by a Player
Friended by 10 Players
Friended by 25 Players
Friended by 50 Players
Enemy of a Player
Enemy of 10 Players
Enemy of 25 Players
Enemy of 50 Players

Other stuff
Become a Premium Member
Upload profile picture
Play games on 10 different boards
Play games on 25 different boards
Play games on 50 different boards
Had an account for > 1 year
Had an account for > 3 years

You can preview which achievements you qualify for by going to this page: http://www.wargear.net/players/info/tom/Achievements

Next steps are to create the medal images and then the notification system. I'll keep adding achievements as we go along.