Thread: 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!

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

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.