Add Leaderboards/Achievements/Gamerscore/Timetrials to Encourage Competition

Update: Achievements in 1.20: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/11099


This is another suggestion that I think has a very favorable cost/benefit ratio. I don't think it would be very hard or take a lot of time to implement, and the potential benefits are great. Epic content in massive patches are great and all, but if they take too long to implement, they can possibly do great harm as well (as we can already see by some of the impatient discontent in the game and on this forum).

As any of us who have Xbox Live or PSN can attest to, the very existence of a gamerscore/trophy system adds an incredible amount of incentive to achieve goals and do objectives that players would have otherwise ignored or not cared about.

Now, we already have an achievement system, soft of. You can see a player's history on their Lodestone profile, but no one cares about that. It's not connected to a points system, so no one cares. It's not highly visible, so you can't use it as a measurement of status, so no one cares. Assign points to the history achievements, and suddenly, people will care.


Timetrials:

I propose that the game keep track of the time it takes to kill the NMs that a player or party fights. It can then display this information to everyone on the server in an easy to find menu option. The following should be tracked:

solo times

duo times

trio times

light party (4 ppl) times

full party (8 ppl) times

That way, hardcore players can show off to all the world just how good they are and how fast they can kill stuff. It's one thing to brag about it, it's another thing to actually prove it.

The game would also keep track of which linkshell the party leader had active when first engaging the mob, so it can give credit to that linkshell as well as the players.

This gives players an even greater incentive to kill NMs aside from just the gear drops.

There is a problem that I can see, however, in that hardcore players would spawn camp NMs TOO much, to the detriment of other casual players who just want the item. One way around this is to have an NPC sell items that would force pop NMs and throw the player into an instance to fight the NM. The force popped NM doesn't drop any items, and it would only be good for players who want to "practice". Force popped NMs do not influence their open-world counterparts at all.


Once all the players' gamerscores and timetrials are easily visible on a leaderboard, make them filterable and searchable by player, class, server, linkshell, etc for great functionality.

This would inject much needed revitalization just by adding new functionality to old content. It's like a "content-multiplier", if you will.

edit:
An additional benefit of a publicly viewable leaderboard is that it'll make class imbalances and exploits pretty obvious. If you were to see a ridiculously fast cleartime on a boss, then you'll know something odd is afoot.

"like" if you like, please!

Good idea. Would add an extra incentives to a few things.

I know I would love to try and beat another linkshell/parties best time on a NM.

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Originally Posted by Armok

Good idea. Would add an extra incentives to a few things.

I know I would love to try and beat another linkshell/parties best time on a NM.

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Thanks :)

I mean, if we can't have direct player-vs-player content in the form of beating each others' brains out, we might as well have a different kind of PVP in the form of who can beat the NMs' brains out the fastest. That way, we're still competing with each other, and with a leaderboard, the results can easily be recorded.

Achievements for reaching a certain level cap with each job would be good

Oh snap. Brand new "achievements" dev tag category is up now on the Japanese side.

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Originally Posted by Foxclon

[dev1081] アチーブメントシステム

• アチーブメントシステムの仕様策定

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"How to implement an achievement system"


Well, what do you think?

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Originally Posted by Rentahamster

Oh snap. Brand new "achievements" dev tag category is up now on the Japanese side.


"How to implement an achievement system"


Well, what do you think?

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The dev tags are one the english side too :P.

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Originally Posted by Reika

The dev tags are one the english side too :P.

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Not at the time of my post.

It looks like they are adding an achievement system to the game, hopefully its as cool as the one you suggested ^_^

Hm, I thought I wrote it down, but in reading the OP again, I guess I didn't.

An additional benefit of a publicly viewable leaderboard is that it'll make class imbalances and exploits pretty obvious. If you were to see a ridiculously fast cleartime on a boss, then you'll know something odd is afoot.

See this for related details: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/s...362#post153362

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

Do not allow imbalance to snowball
-monitor Youtube for bragging tactic videos using repetitive styles.
-Edit new: Record setups brought to and results of key battles to monitor for imbalanced shifts in player choices.
-Quickly incorporate player-designed tactics into the game by modifying and approving the tactic officially, or patch an unacceptable tactic. Time frame: within 1 month of discovering the tactics' use.
-Fix all imbalances within a period of level cycling to prevent an entire generation of players levelling a job just for the imbalance and effectively rendering balance correction unpopular by biased participation.

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Leaderboards and Time Trials would be a fun addition! And whenever they decide to add chocobos, a whole slew of new time trial challenges open up. Best time from Gridania to Ul'dah, from Gridania to one of its hamlets, or even deep into Coerthas. Each zone could have its own series of time trials. Hell, once a day a server-wide chocobo races is held in a different place with a variety of checkpoints to keep it interesting, with the winners announced by Herald's through the big cities. Winner also gets a cash prize that increases as the number of racers grow.


If the devs were to take some of suggestions from VeranRamaden's Ideas That Would Bring Life Into Eorzea thread, there are a few interesting mini-games that could have a time challenge aspect to them. Not to mention any number of fun, silly little mini-games they could add into the game, especially to the smaller towns outside of the cities*.


I wouldn't mind some time of challenge achievements, where after killing 1,000 of a certain type of monster, you get some sort of bonus applied every time you fight against that type. (Whether it be a small defense boost, do slightly more damage, etc.) Another 9,000 kills and you get the next little bonus. With the last ones kicking in at 20,000 and 100,000? It shouldn't be something you can earn in a few sittings, it should take a while, if ever, to earn them all. Like the Lu Shang's fishing rod challenge in FFXI. And the kill only counts towards this bonus if you earn SP from it.


Oh, and if they add an achievement like system in-game, I should be able to select a player and type /achievement to see everything they've done, how they rate among people on the server, and even their on-going progress on a number of long-term challenges.

• Gridania to Ul'dah Chocobo Race Challenge (complete) best time - 24:01 Rank 105/900
• Coblyn Challenge - 450/1000
• NMs fought...
• Dungeons completed...
• Mini-game times

... etc.


* And instead of making these mini-games a once a day sort of thing, especially the ones where you can earn gil or items from them, have them increase in difficulty until they become impossible to do any longer. 20 hours later, the difficulty is back to normal and you can try again.

It seems there is a dev post on the JPN side about the leaderboard aspect of this topic. The thread in question was about asking for a cleartime ranking.

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Originally Posted by Triairy

こんばんは。

吉田Pにクリアタイムのランキング実装はどうですか？と聞いてみたところ、非常に乗り気でした。
ただ、「ランキングに入るとキャラクター名が表示されるけどいいかなぁ。……吉田はむしろ表示させたいけど」とコメントをもらいました。

そのあたりのフィードバックを引き続きいただきつつ、
The Lodestone上に、蛮神バトル、インスタンスレイド、ギルドリーヴなど各種コンテンツの、
クリアタイムのランキングを表示できるよう検討を行っていきます。

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Originally Posted by Triairy

I asked YoshiP how he feels about a cleartime ranking, and he was very interested in it. He'd like to show a list of character names, but just wonders if everyone would be okay with having their name displayed publicly like that.

With that in mind, please provide feedback about that issue.
We will be looking into adding Primal battle, instance raid, and guildleve cleartime rankings to the Lodestone.

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Yes please. Do it. It adds more competitive content that lets players challenge the ultimate opponent: themselves.

Would seriously love if they implemented all of OPs ideas.

If we can only pick one, then definitely achievements with a point score applied, so some are more valuable than others. EG : reach lvl 20 = 20 points, Reach lvl 50 = 100 points.

PLS SE!

More info about leaderboards from the JPN dev posts:

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Originally Posted by Triairy

皆さん、こんばんわ。


はい、現行のヒストリーはあくまでプレイログになり、アチーブメントと連動はしません。
ヒストリーは冒険者の皆さん一人一人が歩んできた足跡ですので、アチーブメントが実装されても
削除したり統合したりすることはなく、ヒストリーとして今後も存続します。


これについてはまさに「システム導入時からのヨーイドンで、全員頑張ればやり込みが達成出来るモノ」になりますのでご安心ください。たとえばこれまでの季節イベントに参加していないからアチーブメントが達成できない、というようなものはありません。

ただし、たとえば「第七霊災を完遂した」など、新生までの間にしか達成できないアチーブメントは存在します。


アチーブメントの仕様については、後日トピックスでご紹介する予定ですのでお待ちいただければ幸いです。

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The player history is primarily a player log, and will not be integrated into the achievement system. The history is a step-by-step record of your player's development, so it will remain separate from the achievement system.

Don't worry, from the time achievements are implemented, everyone will be eligible to complete everything. For example, there's not going to be a situation where you can't get a seasonal activity completion just because you haven't participated in all of the seasonal events up until now.

However, there will be story-related achievements like "Completed the 7th Umbral Era Quests" and stuff like that that can only be completed before the the rebirth in 2.0.

We will introduce the achievement system in a future topic.

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Looking good.

More from Yoshida:

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

プロデューサ/ディレクタの吉田です。

一点だけ補足です。
「季節イベント系アチーブメント」は、そのイベント単体でのアチーブメントもありますが、
「年間すべての季節イベント系アチーブメントを達成」のように、
長期スパンで達成し、大きな報酬を得るものも予定しています。

よってパッチ1.20のアチーブメントシステム搭載前の季節イベントは、
これに該当することはありませんが、
今後は「取り逃すとコンプリートできない」アチーブメントも登場します。
その点、季節イベントと第七霊災は、ちょっと特殊なので申し添えておきます。

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There actually will be seasonal event achievements, as well as long term seasonal achievements (get all the seasonal achievements in a year) where you can get even greater rewards.

Therefore, all the seasonal events prior to path 1.20 will not count towards the new achievement system, but there will be future achievements that can be missed if not completed in time. The 7th Umbral Era questline and the seasonal achievements are unique in that regard, so I wanted to clarify.

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Well, there's your incentive to stick around until 2.0. If you don't, you're gonna miss some achievements.

Achievements in 1.20: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/11099

A decent first start.

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* Players will not yet be able to view each other’s achievement information. Come Version 2.0, it will be possible to examine another character’s achievements via the check command.

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This is really, dumb. What's the point of achievements if no one else can see it? Seriously, fix this BEFORE 2.0

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* Achievements are separate from History, the latter of which will continue to exist.

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QUESTION: I would like clarification on this part. If we already did something in our History that is the same as an achievement, will we automatically get credit for that achievement? Or will we have to do everything all over again once we unlock the achievement list from the NPC?

On one hand, it would give players more to do, but on the other hand, it would suck for a lot of players who already did these things in preparation.