Reimagining Achievements - A list of changes for a healthy game

I say this as someone who’s ranked #53 in achievements on my world and in the top 3000 globally. I’ve done my share of grinds, many of which are longform, obscure, and painful. And even I think the system is broken.

The Problem: Many of FFXIV’s achievements aren’t achievements: they’re chores. We have things like gathering 20,000 Accursed Hoards from Deep Dungeon or 5,000 open world chests in the Occult Crescent. These are 1000+ hour grinds that boil down to “do X activity Y amount of times.” They’re boring, tasteless, and clearly designed just to pad the game. It’s no surprise that a huge portion of players don’t even bother trying to achievement hunt, as these goals are too intimidating and not remotely fun.
What Needs to Change:

1. Reimagine Achievements as Unique Challenges: Let’s move away from raw repetition and instead create achievements that offer unique gameplay experiences. Think “Run a specific dungeon without any party members getting a stack of Vulnerability” or “Complete a dungeon with a full party of healers.”

For Deep Dungeons, there could be achievements for solo-clearing with each job, and a capstone achievement for doing it with all jobs. Yes, that’s a grind, but it’s a meaningful one. Ocean Fishing actually does this well, with goals like “catch X prawns with your party” or “catch all the big fish.” These encourage collaboration and experimentation instead of pure repetition.

2. Retire the Outdated Grinds (Controversial): It’s time to clean house. Achievements like “complete this duty 10 times” are fine. But the ones with absurd numbers should be retired. WoW has a model for this called Feats of Strength which stores legacy achievements that no longer reward points and can’t be earned anymore.
FFXIV could adopt this: achievements with extreme, unhealthy numbers are removed from the game (but preserved on existing accounts), and flagged as “Retired.” They’d be worth 0 achievement points moving forward.

3. Apply This to Seasonal/Holiday Achievements Too: Seasonal event achievements would also be tracked in this way. They’re limited-time by nature, and their removal or preservation should reflect that.

4. Leaderboards and Public Recognition: Let’s give achievement hunters a reason to care. Add official high scores and allow achievement point totals to be shown on Adventurer Plates. Give us a visible marker of progress, something that adds prestige to the pursuit.

Yes, some of these changes would negatively impact me. I’ve earned many longform achievements. But the system, as it stands, is not healthy. I care about this feature enough to want it to be better both for current hunters and for the ones who haven’t even tried achievement hunting yet.

This is why I only bother with mounts. I tried doing achievements but it's so incredibly boring. Doing levequests 500 times for example, or getting a lot of gil from leves. The minion from Ocean Fishing is enough work without the achievements that come after it.

In comparison, just going as far as the mount is usually still fun for me and gives me decent amount of experience of the content it's from. If they just remodeled all the achievements to line up with the mounts it would be a lot better.

I agree that achievements should be more interesting, but as a completionist, I hate the idea of "retired" unobtainable achievements.

That would very much suck for newer people who are getting in to the game later and want to do all the things.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I agree that achievements should be more interesting, but as a completionist, I hate the idea of "retired" unobtainable achievements.

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We already have them: seasonal event achievements.

i think they should add milestones to the achievement hunt

give out a cool minion if you earned 5k, a mount for 20k, something more special for 30k etc.

the achievement certificates that we currently have are just plain garbage

I'm sitting at 363 global, 6th for my server. The only achievements I have left now are mostly absurd grinds with old treasure maps which rely on RNG and some days you just get zero progress at all after 6 hours, BLU achievements I missed the wave on when it was new but will probably get around to but take ages to build teams for, time gated leve x 5000 ones that have no reason to be time gated, and the really dumb OC ones. The clear tower 100 times one is particularly dumb since you could feasibly +2 EVERY armor set in less than 100 runs and have zero reason to be in there. I can see the bunny chest one getting easier after a future nerf or something down the line maybe.

The PvP ones are the true RNG though. It's just a complete coin toss every match.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I agree that achievements should be more interesting, but as a completionist, I hate the idea of "retired" unobtainable achievements.

That would very much suck for newer people who are getting in to the game later and want to do all the things.

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What an absurdly stupid take. It's like you didn't think about what OP was asking for.

Sure, your stance is a respectable one, but when you look at the achievements in the game...

1. Most removed achievements aren't related to difficult challenges. Some were circumstantial to 1.0 systems (i.e. 1.0 beast tribe titles). You weren't missing out on much...
2. You were already engaging with most of the systems/achievements anyways. OP was referring to the achievements with extreme requirements and prejudice.
3. The rarest ones only rewards those who have the time (patience is a given in our hobby). That's the only achievement. Nobody is there to clap for you when you've spent over 1k hours in PoTD collecting hordes. They'll only clap when you get the Necromancer title.
4. Not only do they add new achievements to existing tasks, their requirements are DOUBLE the previous achievement (For the Horde VI, added 6.35, forcing you, as a completionist, to collect an additional 10K HORDES!!!!!)

All of this is to say that one look at the Occult Crescent achievements is enough to question you and your achievement hunt. How much time does it take for 100 Forked Tower runs? How much gil/time would it cost you to get 1k bunny chests and 1k chests from pots?

If the 5k leves achievement (or similar unhealthy time sinks) was removed today, would you feel bad for newly minted FFXIV achievement hunters? Would you want them to suffer in the same way you did?

I think TERA did it best, and it has many of the things you've mentioned. Interesting battle-related achievements ("Kill ABC boss without getting hit by XYZ attack", "Kill ABC boss under 5 minutes -most likely a shorter time in XIV, fights in TERA could stretch out for a long time- or less", "Feed the boss X amount of damage ups through its specific mechanic made to punish you, then kill it despite the added difficulty", etc.)


The only annoying battle achievements in TERA of that nature were the "deal critical damage X amount of times" and eventually being locked out of that dungeon due to leveling. But it could be made to work here in the sense of "hit your positional X amount of times in ABC boss" could be a fun achievement for melees. Similarly, there were achievements for using certain skills X amount of times which were mostly situational, so it could encourage you to change up your playstyle a bit and experiment.


The cool thing TERA had going on was a tangible, visible reward/flex around your job's icon. In the old UI it was a laurel around your job and in the new UI it looked more like futuristic wings. They were tied to the amount of points you had, and there were 5 tiers. They could eventually continue adding tiers in XIV if they felt like it. In TERA, you'd naturally lose points as dungeons got rotated in and out of availability and their points would be stored away from your total until they were re-added into the selection of gearing dungeons. Not my preferred method, but it encourages you to keep getting achievements to maintain your ranking. I don't think XIV really needs it though, since just adding more achievements as they go would naturally push you out of your tier eventually if you never did anything that gives you an achievement.


TERA PC had many reasons to die, but their achievement system was never one of them imho. I think the console version still exists, but I've never played it myself.

Even just copying wow achievements ui will be too hard for yoship. Also, considering that savage fights are all scripted, where doing something odd = error, I can't see how they can implement "Glory of the raider" like meta achievements (do specific bosses in specific way ranging from kill boss super fast to "don't kill add for 5 minutes to create hard mode".

We are stuck with do X 5000 times until ff14 gets new dev team.

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Originally Posted by thedude28

What an absurdly stupid take. It's like you didn't think about what OP was asking for.

Sure, your stance is a respectable one, but when you look at the achievements in the game...

1. Most removed achievements aren't related to difficult challenges. Some were circumstantial to 1.0 systems (i.e. 1.0 beast tribe titles). You weren't missing out on much...
2. You were already engaging with most of the systems/achievements anyways. OP was referring to the achievements with extreme requirements and prejudice.
3. The rarest ones only rewards those who have the time (patience is a given in our hobby). That's the only achievement. Nobody is there to clap for you when you've spent over 1k hours in PoTD collecting hordes. They'll only clap when you get the Necromancer title.
4. Not only do they add new achievements to existing tasks, their requirements are DOUBLE the previous achievement (For the Horde VI, added 6.35, forcing you, as a completionist, to collect an additional 10K HORDES!!!!!)

All of this is to say that one look at the Occult Crescent achievements is enough to question you and your achievement hunt. How much time does it take for 100 Forked Tower runs? How much gil/time would it cost you to get 1k bunny chests and 1k chests from pots?

If the 5k leves achievement (or similar unhealthy time sinks) was removed today, would you feel bad for newly minted FFXIV achievement hunters? Would you want them to suffer in the same way you did?

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As someone who has done a lot of these grinds and knows newer players who are working on them now, yes. Some people like grinding achievements. Asking for them to be removed because it isn't for you is borderline ridiculous.

Your second point just reads like typical gamer "FU, got mine" from people who want to feel special or for in-game achievements etc to be built around their personal goal. In FFXIV people also get things from the achievement vendor so removing some of the lower level achievements may reduce engagement which helps to retain newer players. You all need to remember that hurting new players reduces their desire to play when you are asking for things like this. These are things developers have to think about.

WoW's move to "Feats of Strength" is mostly viewed positively by people who want to say "I have an achievement you can't get". Most of these achievements being made "FoS" are because the content was removed from the game. That wasn't necessarily viewed as positive by the greater community. It's less content to do for alts, new players, etc. I'm sure people are currently okay with this, but I find the WoW community is way more focused on achievements now which doesn't appeal to me.

As for seasonal events? If you get an item from that event then I don't care if it's an achievement or not, but if you don't I think the achievement is good. Again, it sounds like you are wanting this system tailored to your circumstance and don't like that long time players are getting something you can't. That happens in every game and we can either be salty about it or even use it to learn about that period in the game, how people got the achievement, etc.

A big issue with WoW is the move to achievements and the focus of the community more on obtaining some achievement than actually interacting with other players. I will say some achievements in WoW do bring people together which is good, but some make people treat their fellow players poorly as well. Like trying to kill certain world bosses so they can retain their "unique achievement" for as long as possible (that happens in WoW). Having a few achievement hunters ruin the game for everyone isn't fun and can be a factor in why players leave a game.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

As someone who has done a lot of these grinds and knows newer players who are working on them now, yes. Some people like grinding achievements. Asking for them to be removed because it isn't for you is borderline ridiculous.

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I'm 9000 hoards into my hoard grind and if they removed the 10k/20k i wouldnt be upset. There are plenty of already unobtainable achievements and WoW has them as well. There aren't a ton that would be retired and if you have earned it, it would be a 0 point badge. Any new player who joins and wants to collect everything is already not going to be able to, so it doesn't matter.

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Originally Posted by Gortys

Your second point just reads like typical gamer "FU, got mine" from people who want to feel special or for in-game achievements etc to be built around their personal goal. In FFXIV people also get things from the achievement vendor so removing some of the lower level achievements may reduce engagement which helps to retain newer players. You all need to remember that hurting new players reduces their desire to play when you are asking for things like this. These are things developers have to think about.

WoW's move to "Feats of Strength" is mostly viewed positively by people who want to say "I have an achievement you can't get". Most of these achievements being made "FoS" are because the content was removed from the game. That wasn't necessarily viewed as positive by the greater community. It's less content to do for alts, new players, etc. I'm sure people are currently okay with this, but I find the WoW community is way more focused on achievements now which doesn't appeal to me.

As for seasonal events? If you get an item from that event then I don't care if it's an achievement or not, but if you don't I think the achievement is good. Again, it sounds like you are wanting this system tailored to your circumstance and don't like that long time players are getting something you can't. That happens in every game and we can either be salty about it or even use it to learn about that period in the game, how people got the achievement, etc.

A big issue with WoW is the move to achievements and the focus of the community more on obtaining some achievement than actually interacting with other players. I will say some achievements in WoW do bring people together which is good, but some make people treat their fellow players poorly as well. Like trying to kill certain world bosses so they can retain their "unique achievement" for as long as possible (that happens in WoW). Having a few achievement hunters ruin the game for everyone isn't fun and can be a factor in why players leave a game.

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This is straight not true on many fronts. Most major achievement sites already disregard unobtainables. The idea here is to make achievements more appealing not less. Currently as it is, they are unappealing. As someone who started in ShB and is still top 4k globally and rank ~50 in my server, it really goes to show that players don't like engaging with achievements. It's an ignored system most players don't actually care for.

There's also no rhyme or reason for how some achievements give an title or mount compared to others, and then there's some that take hundreds of hours to achieve but only give 5 or 10 points vs one & done ones for 10 points. They no effort added in the points to purchase old veteran awards, which you can buy everything from with little to no effort, then left nothing big to show off. There should be special things at 20k, 25k, 30k points at the very least. Honestly would have been a great place to give out the gold mounts instead of gil sinks.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

This is straight not true on many fronts. Most major achievement sites already disregard unobtainables. The idea here is to make achievements more appealing not less. Currently as it is, they are unappealing. As someone who started in ShB and is still top 4k globally and rank ~50 in my server, it really goes to show that players don't like engaging with achievements. It's an ignored system most players don't actually care for.

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Real talk I think most people only care about achievements as a vehicle to earn a reward, be it a title or mount. As an example, I ground out a Beata of the Firmament title only because I thought there was some small possibility that they may have incorporated that into the housing launch for Ishgard and giving people with titles priority access. It was just a guess, didn't happen, but I got the title. Now that I have a rare, unachievable title, all of the rest are drastically reduced in appeal for me, so it's always going to be a catch-22 with making things hard/impossible and thus prestigious versus turning off the completionists who the system is, theoretically, designed to appeal to in the first place.

I don't think we need to have achievements removed, but I would say adding more achievements that are attained through passive play would be a big improvement.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

We already have them: seasonal event achievements.

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Notorious monsters achievements an another example of retired achievements that are not seasonal events achievements.

I don't mind grinding achievements, like the Hunt and Firmament/Cosmic ones. What I do mind is lazy rewards. Just look at the DT Hunt mount (which takes like 100h+ to get) it's just a re-skinned Wyvern and same can be said about the Cosmic mount, they just reused the Vacuum Suit, which entirely defeats the purpose, imo. What is it with CB always taking the lazy route when it comes to this game? Why can't they just put some effort into it and make some cool rewards? Is it that much to ask when they're expecting us to spend hundreds of hours for these achievements?

https://i.imgur.com/4jvaCHD.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/NphcQ9Z.png

I loved achievements hunting when I played Wow Wotlk because they weren't a horrible grind fest and it felt nice and rewarding. In this game it's totally the opposite. Either do 10k fates, ress someone 10k times, go and open 10k coffers idc. So most of them are either botted or "i give up this is boring".

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

As someone who has done a lot of these grinds and knows newer players who are working on them now, yes. Some people like grinding achievements. Asking for them to be removed because it isn't for you is borderline ridiculous.

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I agree, asking them to be removed for ME is borderline ridiculous. Except y'know... what I'm asking for... would benefit you... if you cared.

Let me tell you just how careless you and Squex is.

I already think Occult Crescent is horribly designed. But the 1000 carrot achievement... Running around the map for treasure is one thing. Gunning for rare drops is another. Asking your bravest soldiers to get 1000 of them?!??!?!?!

Option A: Speed-run through capitalism.

• At the time of writing, Universalis, an "international" market-board driven by player data, prices these Fortune Carrots at 2.3mil gil each on North American servers (I'm on Cactuar).
• 2.3mil x 1000 carrots = 2.3 BILLION GIL, if the prices stay at 2.3mil. And they won't stay there exactly because they're a 1% drop.
• The only good way to tackle this issue is owning an FC with maxed out Fight Club subs, but even then it'll still be a slog and you're still raising the price of the carrots with each purchase (BECAUSE THEY'RE A 1% DROP).

Okay, but real estate in this game isn't noob-friendly. It's a lotto system now. So, if you get priced out of Option A, you gotta run it back, no?

Option B: Running it back.

• My friend tells me that it will cost you approx. 5500 hours to collect all 1000 carrots. It doesn't really matter if that's accurate, because...
• 5500 hours = 229 days.
• 229 days spent in Occult Crescent running around the map, doing nothing but farming chests. That's not including bathroom breaks. It's all optimized active time spent.

Even if you get a little lucky, this is just as bad as the 20k hoards achievements (which you have), but not as bad as the Leves, which are still perhaps the most time intensive. How... how could you say that I'd like achievements removed just for me? Shouldn't all achievements be attainable to some degree?

But no, people like you would just spit in my face and tell me to let it go... when I have more of a sense of what I'm doing for these achievements than you...

With all due respect, I hate you. Please quit the game at your earliest convenience.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

I think TERA did it best, and it has many of the things you've mentioned. Interesting battle-related achievements ("Kill ABC boss without getting hit by XYZ attack", "Kill ABC boss under 5 minutes -most likely a shorter time in XIV, fights in TERA could stretch out for a long time- or less", "Feed the boss X amount of damage ups through its specific mechanic made to punish you, then kill it despite the added difficulty", etc.)

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Funny enough, that was how the achievements in FF16 worked. I accidentally got the Titan fight one on the first try because that fight read a lot like Eden 4 Savage to my brain.

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Originally Posted by thedude28

I agree, asking them to be removed for ME is borderline ridiculous. Except y'know... what I'm asking for... would benefit you... if you cared.

Let me tell you just how careless you and Squex is.

I already think Occult Crescent is horribly designed. But the 1000 carrot achievement... Running around the map for treasure is one thing. Gunning for rare drops is another. Asking your bravest soldiers to get 1000 of them?!??!?!?!

Option A: Speed-run through capitalism.

• At the time of writing, Universalis, an "international" market-board driven by player data, prices these Fortune Carrots at 2.3mil gil each on North American servers (I'm on Cactuar).
• 2.3mil x 1000 carrots = 2.3 BILLION GIL, if the prices stay at 2.3mil. And they won't stay there exactly because they're a 1% drop.
• The only good way to tackle this issue is owning an FC with maxed out Fight Club subs, but even then it'll still be a slog and you're still raising the price of the carrots with each purchase (BECAUSE THEY'RE A 1% DROP).

Okay, but real estate in this game isn't noob-friendly. It's a lotto system now. So, if you get priced out of Option A, you gotta run it back, no?

Option B: Running it back.

• My friend tells me that it will cost you approx. 5500 hours to collect all 1000 carrots. It doesn't really matter if that's accurate, because...
• 5500 hours = 229 days.
• 229 days spent in Occult Crescent running around the map, doing nothing but farming chests. That's not including bathroom breaks. It's all optimized active time spent.

Even if you get a little lucky, this is just as bad as the 20k hoards achievements (which you have), but not as bad as the Leves, which are still perhaps the most time intensive. How... how could you say that I'd like achievements removed just for me? Shouldn't all achievements be attainable to some degree?

But no, people like you would just spit in my face and tell me to let it go... when I have more of a sense of what I'm doing for these achievements than you...

With all due respect, I hate you. Please quit the game at your earliest convenience.

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In what world is removing the achievement preferable over increasing the drop rate?

Calling me ignorant while simultaneously displaying this level of dumb dumb is crazy.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

In what world is removing the achievement preferable over increasing the drop rate?

Calling me ignorant while simultaneously displaying this level of dumb dumb is crazy.

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Can you read? I didn't propose any solution! I'm just trying to say that this achievement COMPLETELY SUCKS BECAUSE OF THEIR CARELESSNESS.

The fact that you're to ignorant to BEING OKAY with getting priced out or getting the life sucked out of you... LITERALLY RUNNING AROUND IN CIRCLES... while accusing me of proposing a solution... that would damage the sanctity of your achievement philosophy?!?!?!??!??!?!?!?

Get real. You actually can't see that these hobbies are unhealthy for what they are.

Stay poor, bro. I'm getting this 1000 fortune carrots achievement before you. Enjoy running around in circles for 229 active days, DOG.

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Originally Posted by thedude28

Stay poor, bro. I'm getting this 1000 fortune carrots achievement before you. Enjoy running around in circles for 229 active days, DOG.

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... Are you alright..?

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Originally Posted by Shistar

... Are you alright..?

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No, but thank you for asking. My favourite hobby just got hit with a 2 billion bill. It's insane no matter how you look at it!!

Also, I'm the kind of catgirl to grind out all of the Bozja Augmented Laws Order sets for glam. I have to go through a lot just to say Occult Crescent truly sucks.

Anyways, Viper just got buffed in PvP so....!!!!!!

There's already a few players with the 1000 carrot title too. It will be particularly hilarious if\when they boost the carrot drop rate