Keeping People Playing PA

Right now, when you win a game, you get a winning screen and that's it. The game doesn't even record that you won a match. There is no way to tell what skill group a player is in (without playing against them) and nothing to boast about. Other than being incredibly fun, there is nothing else to keep me playing PA. The "dude, it's early access, it's not finished" argument is barely valid anymore, considering that Uber felt the game was ready for 1.0 release two or three weeks ago. I've thought of some things that will keep people like me interested in playing. All these stats are made up on the spot and do not represent anyones stats:

STATS //most of the following should be disabled in modded games, games where anyone's econ scale != 1, and AI battles

TOTAL ENEMY UNITS DESTROYED: 974,453
COMMANDERS DESTROYED: 86
SKILL GROUP: Galactic Officer //cool ranks commanders might be assigned

TIME PLAYED

FFA Matches: 23.7h
Team Army Matches: 67.3h
Team Army (Shared) Matches: 41.4h
1v1 Matches: 6.1h //because whats the difference between a 2P FFA and a 1P army vs 1P army
Galactic Wars: 51.2h
Total Time Played: 188.1h​

MATCHES //never record losses, it discourages players

FFA Matches Won: 17
Team Army Matches Won: 32
Team Army (Shared) Matches Won: 20
1v1 Matches Won: 3
Total: 74
Galactic War Battles Won: 89
Galactic Wars Concluded: 6​

ECONOMY //all of these stats are not accurate and do not match up, don't over-think it

Total Metal Produced: 1.3 quadrillion
Total Energy Produced: 8.6 quadrillion
Total Metal Spent: 956 trillion
Total Energy Spent: 6.7 quadrillion
Highest Stored Metal: 534,000
Highest Stored Energy: 4.6M​

UNITS BUILT //every unit and building represented

Bot Factories: 678 //after playing for a year or two... wouldn't it be cool to see these stats?
Vehicle Factories: 342
<the other factories and their advanced>
Metal Extractors: 1,234
Energy Plants: 6,543
...
Doxes: 101,457
Grenadiers: 24,654 //all bots, vehicles, air etc. should be grouped together respectively
...
Rippers: 55,674
Spinners: 33,123
<fabricators and other attacking units of all forms>
...
<radars>
<defense structures, walls>
Nuclear Missile Factories: 78
Nuclear Missiles: 42
Halleys: 37
Asteroids/Moons Sent to Annihilate: 21
Metal Storages: 457
Energy Storages: 478

Total Units:
Total Buildings: ​

Rather than yelling at Uber "Y'ALL NEED TO ADD ACHIEVEMENTS AND BLA BLA BLA..." I thought I would think up some stuff of my own. Names are mostly placeholders, unless people like them.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Adversary: Destroy an enemy commander.
Juggernaut: Destroy 100 enemy commanders.
Universally Feared: Destroy 250 enemy commanders. //long term goals like this can really keep people playing, could be even higher
Operation Silent Snipe: Destroy 20 enemy commanders with the SXX laser platform.
Too Efficient: Finish off an enemy commander by reclaiming it.
1,000 Birds with One Stone: Destroy 1,000 units and buildings with one Nuclear Missile.
Untouchable: Destroy 1,000 units in a single match using artillery units and buildings.
Space Colonel: Command 5,000 units at once. //select 5,000 units and move them/attack/patrol, any command
Playtime's Over: Command 10,000 units at once.
One Thing Led to Another...: Finish off an enemy team in a Team Army match with an asteroid. //... and I kinda dumped an asteroid on him
Asteroid Handler: Have you or your team send 50 asteroids to annihilate.
Pre-venge: Be the first to attack an enemy player in an FFA match.
Mischief Managed: Win a 1v1 match in 10 minutes. //is this even possible?
<tons more could be thought of>​

Perhaps players can unlock certain unique commanders (not the backers-only commanders, of course) by reaching certain stats and unlocking achievements. Uber will keep developing PA for a long time, right?​

STEAM TRADING CARDS AND BADGES //I heard Mavor say a few times he was interested in Steam trading cards
Here are two trading cards I put together quickly with GIMP and Blender. Not much thought or design went into these:


"Cooliosis." - allister

Badge Levels:​

1. Dox Shooter //possible level names
2. Base Breaker
3. Intrepid Invader
4. Solar Sentinel
5. Dimensional Devastator

With Steam trading cards and badges also comes tradable profile backgrounds and emotes. I could see in the long, distant future, a market for custom commanders and custom models for other units. Similar to how TF2 has a big market for hats and other items, and CS:GO has a big market for weapon skins and knives. In both games, you're only paying to look cool, so there's no P2W. That's a long shot, and I don't know if Uber is interested in getting involved in that kind of stuff. Valve has to deal with so much crap, but they've made tons of money off these markets.

I can't think of any more that doesn't result in making the game unfair for new players, and fits in RTS games. Wonder what the rest of you can come up with, and what your opinions are on what I suggested. I thought this would be a good time to talk about this, as alot of PA's core features are in place and now they're polishing up. Please don't nit pick the made up stats, like "who plays 188.1h of PA and has only built 42 nuclear missiles". I hope the format and syntax was easy to read.

Thanks for taking a look, everyone. Uber - game gets better with every update!

Achievement ideas:

Double kill
"Destroy an enemy commander by destroying another enemy commander close to it."

Extreme double kill
"Destroy an enemy commander by destroying another enemy commander close to it. Using your own commander."


*creeps away*

I like these ideas, they seem quite fun, and some of them would be easy to implement.

screenshot bragging rights

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198070703431/screenshots/

http://pastats.com/

Sure, sure, but not the same as ingame achievements.

Well i know what i would like.

I feel like that Trackmania did something right.

What is a rank. well its out of all the player who play. I found huge joy in that game. Being able to see ranking not just against the world, but seeing my rank in Denmark, and then even further right down to my city. I always felt like that was awesome for motivation.

Knowing like your the best in your city, or country that kinda cool to me.

Im not really an achievement guy, because the name is a like an achivement for me is something you have to achieve eg its hard very hard. Like doing Deus Ex Human revolution on the hardest non lethal, now that was a sweet reward for doing that.

So achivements for like going your self vs 2 brutal ai, vs 3 brutal ai. You know impossible odds. That sort of stuff could motivate me definitely. Or win games only using one type of unit. Extremely hard to near impossible

WTF
WTF
WTF

Well for one, we get rid of community members who are going to complain whenever they get called "casual" when that's exactly what they are.

I agree with stats, achievements and tradings cards are pretty bleh.

If a game has no achievements and nothing to look forward to, I lose interest very quick. I'm playing for nothing. I need to have some objective at the end of the corridor, or I usually stop.

Minecraft was a pretty good example of this. Every world of mine got boring until Mojang added achievements and The End.

I never understood this...

What ever happened to just playing video games for fun? Do you really need to have that false sense of accomplishment while playing video games?

In my experience, achievements, especially in multiplayer games, not only don't add anything to gameplay, but actually ruin in. Because instead of playing with people who actually are dying to play now, you get people who already got today's dose, but keep playing for few more hours because some achievement is close, and you get not-so-good opponent as a result and a boring match. And then, you get people whole play certain match with only one purpose - farm some special achievement. Under normal circumstances, you'd get a nice smooth balanced match with this person, but this time, he can not resist 'comm bomb' achievement, so instead of playing, he sends his comm to your base and dies and doesn't get his achievement because he only did 98% of required damage, so he comes to another lobby and repeats.

Of course, those are anecdotal examples, but I've seen lots of people in other games obsessed by achievements, and not playing game the way it's mean to be played, because there is 'kill N things in on round' or 'use only X' or 'don't do Y' achievements. 'Hey man, team needs you help here', 'No soz I must kill 50 dragons with a pencil in one round, soz'.

And last, why do you need some pre-set objectives by devs? Can't you just think to yourself 'I must win this round using only grenadiers' and do it? Can't you just send nuke to one base, moon to another, and SXX snipe third comm, do a tripple kill and think to yourself 'man, I did it!'? Why do you need other people to decide what is a fun/challenging tactic to execute?

I never understood whole point of achievements as they currently exist.

But that's one primary approach to playing. I mean back in your sandbox or treehouse or on the street playing ball with other kids ... you got nothing but exploration out of it, or maybe bragging rights. Even a game of Monopoly is non-permament, so is every game of Risk.

Obviously I understand taking pride in achievements. Some games - very few of them - do them well. Most games use them as pointless filler material, mostly because everyone else is doing it. Or worse: because the actual game is lacking and achievements make it look like more than it actually is.

Earning my Ulduar drake in WoW's WotLK expansion was an achievement. So was 100%ing Super Meat Boy. There are a couple more of those, but that's about it. Achievements should be rewards for extraordinary investments ... not filler material for everyday ocurrences in a game.

I agree with everything except this. One of the main things that I would like to see would be some sort of win-loss ratio, which would be kind of weird if it showed something like this without losses: 100 wins; ratio of wins to losses: .74.

Everybody loves stats, especially total playtime stats!! I'd love to see ingame profiles which hold this kind of stuff of everybody

Great ideas.

I think there should be some cool in game symbols that accompany ranks.

Even if they don't have a name, doesn't matter.

Numbers for god sakes.

Som!

Aw.. it's just something to do when you're bored. Achievements can be a lotta fun in games, the problem is when games make achievements for super simple things.

So, I do see your point here. More specific achievements could cause problems like this, but things like Universally Feared wouldn't. It's almost saying "win alot".

You could make up stuff in your head, but you would forget by next week. You could log 1000 hours in PA and what do you have to show from your adventure? "A couple screenshots and 1000 hours on Steam, woooooo". Achievements may not be the way to fix this, but stats could. And I know, not everyone plays on Steam, but it holds a huge number of players.

I don't quite understand ... I mean .... ladder? HELL YES ! ....achievements? how are they remotely linked? they have nothing to do with each other and they are not what keeps me playing a game. who the hell cares about achievements? really they're just there to make you feel like asswipe compared to the grinder.

Oh wow you unlocked "triple com kill in less than 10mins"? Yeah..... you and 4,000,000 others.... sucks you haven't unlocked 100% of all the achievements though, like those 5,000 other guys. Hmm you must not be that good.

there's always a bigger fish, achievements is no exception. Heck how many of you haven't already learned this lesson from 2048? everybody's got that one friend who's unlocked the 131,072# square and had a score of 3,866,076.

I never even tried 2048 since I knew right from the start that the entire point of this thing was to make me feel like an underachiever even (and especially) if I was the best at it.



couldn't catch the bit I wanted but the point is the captain is shown that a near-retarded member of his team is on the same level of the game as him, who then tells him "We have so much in common" and he responds by instantly dropping his phone in the trash - "Look at that, I'm cured."

ladders on the other hand, you know what you're going in heads down for. no disappointment. They gauge true skill, not just grind-capacity, patience, OCD, and sleep-deprivation.