Keeping People Playing PA

Yeah, fine achievements can be fun, I understand that.

But achievements being the difference between a good game and a bad game? That's downright absurd.

Then PA is simply not even in the genre that fits your interests. Most F2P games or MMORPGs are basically made for this sort of thing. World of Tanks, War Thunder, PlanetSide 2/any SOE game, Robocraft, Blacklight, [****]MechWarrior Online, Old Republic, Diablo, Path of Exile, and so on...

Achievements, stat tracking, and et cetera can help just as much as they hurt the game, especially stat tracking.
It might be fair to ask what keeps people playing StarCraft 2. People keep playing it because it's a blimey sport.

Otherwise, why not make your goals your skills? Become a competitive player! A pro gamer!
but wait... PA doesn't pay very big in that now does it? Mostly because it's not even finished yet.

There's not a video game that I have ever played that can hold my interest enough to Keo me coming back for long periods of time. I play games obey and over, but after the initial month of 12 hours a day, I can't play more than 1 or 2 without being bored. Friends help, but I'll still keep only a low interest.

2 things i play this game for ...
have fun
annihilate the enemy in the most awesome way possible ...

the problem with minecraft was it didn´t set any goals ... only later with the enderdragon it did...
archievements aren´t a goal for me ... they are just some unnessesary "milestones" one hits after many playthroughs

Achievements can be fun, and can also be a way to teach new player how to play the game (like win a game never floating metal),

I don't play for them, but it's fun to sometimes some random information pop up, like "u have now killed a million doxes". I don't play for achievements but the reveal some funny stats about you from time to time and for me that can be fun.

In those two instances i think they are pretty fun, not something crazy important that is going to keep me playing but some funny snippets that show up from time to time.

I started playing lol around Christmas time. Their achievements and ranking system make me wanna play that more than pa. Even though for me pa is a better game. For every player that doesn't care there is most likely one that does care about these things.

Same with COD. People play that way more than they would if there wasn't prestiges. If you look on the most hours played it's usually 10th
Prestige badges and the odd guy that doesn't care too much for it.

Yeah I don't mind having some achievements to unlock. I don't really bother unless the game grabs me, however I think Uber will be missing a trick as once you do start ticking them off it spurs you on to get the next one....

instead of archievents i would rather play for unlockables ... and those you actualy have in galactic war already ...

Yeah I would like a diamond-bronze like ranking system. each could have its own commander which can be purchasable. Win win for everyone.

Yeah unlocking commanders through playing is a very interesting idea! I've been playing a lot of Star Conflict (f2p space combat game) and they use a levelling system to unlock ships, it's a really nice incentive to play to just get to that next shiny new ship

I only like achievements if they mean anything.
So many games give you a buch of achievements for just reaching a sertain part of the campaign.
Example: Whoohoo an achievement for completing the tutorial. What an accomplishment that was! Everybody is going to be impressed I have that one on my list!

Yeah I know some of them are pretty empty. I actually think the Star Conflict achievements are pretty good, as they unlock titles you can display and they're not easy to get. Things like "dealing more than 50% of the total damage in a team game with at least 5 players in each team" was one that took me ages to unlock- granting the title 'Juggernaut' It isn't impossible, but basically you have to have an incredible game to do it.

I love games focusing on rank and achievement treadmills - tells me at a glance they have little going for them in terms of actual gameplay and saves me lots of time and money.
PA is not such a game, why deliberately make it look like one?

edit: Removed stupid stuff...

What we're discussing here is steam badges (which are pretty inconsequential really but requires little effort) and possibly some stuff you can unlock. Preventing you from playing a game by locking away key required features is bad, having something you can achieve later isn't in my opinion. Addiction is nothing to do with it frankly, please don't resort to trolling.

Well, pardon my bitterness, but much too often games with this kind of, uhm, padding, tend to focus on anything but the core gameplay. With the Uber team being limited in terms of available resources as they actually are, I would much prefer them working on the actual game.
If the gameplay is good people will stay. Treadmill 'content' will do little to make people suffer through bad gameplay.

A lack of player rank makes people want achievements.

It's what they think they want, not what would actually make them happy.

...so many examples found in day-to-day life to illustrate my idea. Anyone wanna give it a try ?

erm.. But Halo had a ranking system, yet people still loved to get achievements?

I've brought up this issue before, and its a legitimate issue, a small playerbase of this game are diehard fans, who just want the game to be remastered as much as possible. These people will keep playing the game unless it becomes too heavy in the Pay to play (PTP) model, no-one likes a pay to play model. Its important to have things that keep the players playing the game other than raw gameplay. Because once you have played a few games, you've done everything. Smashed planets, built tanks, planes and Kbots, lost, won. played all the varieties in planets. And PA loses a lot of interest for me quickly. I look to other games to see what keeps people playing them.

Civilization 5
-> Start differences (sometimes you have horses, sometimes you have salt)
-> massive variety in build paths
-> long game lengths.
- Effective at promoting replayability, without losing interest
- Really expensive to do
- Doesn't work as well in RTS, where quick decisions need to be made, too many things make it too
complicated

League of Legends
-> Scaling PTW elements
-> Meaningful Ranking System
-> Rapid Balance updates
-> Careful balance of Pay to Play features, and Free to Play features, as well as ingame currency.
->Locked features that can be worked towards (champions, runes)
- Exchanges a small amount of interest to compensate for a LOT of replayability. Some people will feel
cheated, but many accept it, and are happy to get their rewards through playing
- Uses Rotation to balance out the feeling of being denied choices early on. At higher levels the rotation
becomes less meaningful
- Money does not trump everything, players are happy to play, because money never gives a 'gameplay'
bonus
- Rapid updates prevents the game getting too stale

Warcraft III (in its prime)
-> Very Strong Map Editor resulting in...
-> Became a huge HUB for custom games, with massive amounts of variety
-> Had an "OK" ranking system
-> custom games tended to make you want to play the main game more.
- This model has a slow start, as it relies on the community, Blizzard kickstarted the trend by providing a
few maps to begin with (Azure TD, Skibi's TD, Egg Hunt, 4 Hero Map)
- Very Powerful once it gets rolling
- Slowly loses some of its core identity, but keeps a massive playerbase.

Ill put my personal opinions in another post when i get around to it, for now, this is here for quoting if anyone wants it. It should help people come up with some ideas

I'd just say the platform it can be for mods and other games.

Even then, that isn't completely developed, but what started as a modifyable UI is now a modifyable server, and all it needs is slow progression torwards rendering hooks. For instance, to make PA a Moba, you need veterancy, and before even that you need modifyable victory conditions. Possibly modifyable unit caps and more hooks at unit abilities. However, it took nearly a year to go from UI to Server mods, we must believe it plausible to progress through necesary hooks.

I hate achievement hoarders alot

I've actually seen a guy on steam give a bad critique on a game because a card drop took him half an hour and keeps him from playing games he wants to play.

Then I thought to myself "These people exist?" and now I see this thread. OP can go farm cards on other games if he wishes so, do not impose this marketing trick here to convince people that steam level is important in some way.