Orange Box 360: 99 Achievements on the Wall...

[Ryan Markel]

Achieve360points.com has the list up for the Orange Box compilation:

http://www.achieve360points.com/game/theorangebox/

This is what I want to see more of in Achievement design. Many of these are well-thought-out, encourage players to strive for additional challenge or alternate ways to play the game, and look to include all the games that are part of the package.

Love these in particular:

22. Targetted Advertising
Pin a soldier to the billboard in chapter Highway 17..

24. Keep Off the Sand!
Cross the antlion beach in chapter Sandtraps without touching the sand..

36. Pacifist
Contain the Citadel core without killing any stalkers..

43. The One Free Bullet
Beat Episode One firing exactly one bullet. Grenade, crowbar, rocket, and Gravgun kills are okay!.

71. Master of Disguise
Trick an opposing medic into healing you..

[ElGuapo]

Agreed. Some of those are great.

[Rorschach]

OMG Spoiler tag needed STAT! :)

My only regret getting the PC version of Bioshock was lack of achievements.

[Erik]

53. Little Rocket Man
Send the garden gnome into space

I can vouch that this one is truly an epic undertaking.

[EvilIdler]

Damn it, I want my Steam purchases to carry over to my LIVE! account :P

[jim crawford]

Man, those are really stingy. I guess when you only have 1000 points to distribute amongst five games, you have to be stingy.

I'd really like to see some sort of "adjusted" view of gamerscore, where individual achievements are valued by their difficulty, not by whatever the designer decided would best sell the game. It could be fairly easily approximated by mining available Live data for the percentage of players who acquired each individual achievement.

I don't think Live makes that view of the achievements available, though, and I don't want to be the one to run the script to hammer Microsoft's servers and gather the data. Has anyone done it for me?

[Ryan Markel]

Man, those are really stingy. I guess when you only have 1000 points to distribute amongst five games, you have to be stingy.

I'd really like to see some sort of "adjusted" view of gamerscore, where individual achievements are valued by their difficulty, not by whatever the designer decided would best sell the game. It could be fairly easily approximated by mining available Live data for the percentage of players who acquired each individual achievement.

I don't think Live makes that view of the achievements available, though, and I don't want to be the one to run the script to hammer Microsoft's servers and gather the data. Has anyone done it for me?

Do you mean that the value of achievements would change over time depending on the number of people who have them? That's an interesting idea, though I think you're right about server load. :)

I think the Orange Box ones are just very well-done. Few very weird values, they're arranged point-wise in terms of difficulty and game progression, and they cover such a wide range of "doings" in-game.

I'm actually looking forward to this one. I indeed have already played through HL2 twice on the PC, but I never bought into Episode One and am looking forward to TeamFortress 2. I'm going to wait to hear what the reviews are of the 360 version, but it's likely I will buy that one instead of the PC.

I'm starting to feel like PC gaming is dead to me, which is a shame, since I spent a lot of time, money, and effort investing in it at one time.

[Zylon]

I'd really like to see some sort of "adjusted" view of gamerscore, where individual achievements are valued by their difficulty, not by whatever the designer decided would best sell the game. It could be fairly easily approximated by mining available Live data for the percentage of players who acquired each individual achievement.

GAMERSCORES.

SERIOUS BUSINESS.

[jim crawford]

Do you mean that the value of achievements would change over time depending on the number of people who have them?

That's what I mean, yeah. If everybody suddenly starts getting the "Survived 500,000 points" achievement in Geometry Wars, maybe its reflection on the personal worth of its achievers should be reassessed.

I think the Orange Box ones are just very well-done. Few very weird values, they're arranged point-wise in terms of difficulty and game progression, and they cover such a wide range of "doings" in-game.

Absolutely, in its own context I think they did a great job. I just wish they could've, you know, multiplied the awards by five or so.

I'm starting to feel like PC gaming is dead to me, which is a shame, since I spent a lot of time, money, and effort investing in it at one time.

Me too. I bought a 360 for Bioshock rather than upgrading my PC, because PC is pretty much dead to me right now. Except for indie games, which don't usually have heavy requirements anyways.

[Rorschach]

Absolutely, in its own context I think they did a great job. I just wish they could've, you know, multiplied the awards by five or so.

But then no one would have played King Kong or any other easy to get 1k achievement games.

[forgeforsaken]

I'm debating getting this for PC or 360. My PC is pretty long in the tooth but it ran HL2 and Episode One decently enough. Wonder which way most of Qt3 is leaning.

[Xaroc]

For me HL2 is a PC game so I am going PC.

[Ryan Markel]

I'm debating getting this for PC or 360. My PC is pretty long in the tooth but it ran HL2 and Episode One decently enough. Wonder which way most of Qt3 is leaning.

I'm going 360 because of PC system requirements and because I prefer Xbox Live's matchmaking if I'm going to play TF2.

Oh, and I'm a sucker for Achievements.

[ProStyle]

10 years ago:
Software mode on a CRT
In my basement on an office chair
On dialup, typing "connect xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" from a list of IPs printed on stacks of paper. Getting kicked off the server for not having the map, downloading it from cdrom.com and returning to find the map has already changed...

Today:
HDTV
In the living room on a couch
Wireless broadband with a server browser and friend list

As much as it baffles me to say it, I'm most likely going to end up playing the next iteration of TF on a console. Consider my mind blown!

The only thing I'm skeptical about is the way servers are going to function. After experiencing Gears matches online with a few shitty connections hosting 8 player games, I can't imagine how hard a 16 player p2p match would grind.

[EvilIdler]

Different Xbox games handle online matches at different levels of shittiness :)
R6V, for example, will let you know that one or more of the other players has an incompatible connection by
freezing up everybody's game, giving you an opportunity to get off the couch and perform biological maintenance.
Other games will simply pop back to the menu without a word, for efficiency.

Once it works, though, getting a match together is pretty easy. I actually think the Halo 3 beta was the best example
of how it should be, with players forming teams that carry over when the leader moves to a different server.
Form a party, THEN find a server, rock on! I want this to be the standard hereafter.

We're getting clan support at the H3 launch, too, which I hope Valve take advantage of. I may end up getting two orange boxes,
just to be in both camps :/

[Kunikos]

For me HL2 is a PC game so I am going PC.

The lack of decent community-made mods (ie groups not bought out by Valve) for HL2 compared to HL1 is a little disappointing, even to this day. If I was someone who owned both a 360 and a PC, I might be tempted to get it on the 360 if only for better online matchmaking for TF2. However, the PC gamer in me screams "dude it's an FPS, you gotta use a mouse and KB". :)

[forgeforsaken]

The Valve games seem to get decent user map support so there is that for the PC side, on the other hand there's always a bunch of garbage maps to wade through on the servers as well.

[Hans Lauring]

GAMERSCORES.

SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Heh,
I don't know my gamerscore or how many and which achievements I've unlocked.

I only find them usefull when they tell me, I can stop doing something.
"Achievement unlocked: Fully researched Spider Slicer" - OK, now I can just shoot them in the face instead of asking them to pose while I takes pictures. Gotcha.

[jim crawford]

But then no one would have played King Kong or any other easy to get 1k achievement games.

Yeah. Part of the reason I want a better achievement system is so that I'm not tempted to play bad games with easy achievements. I haven't caved yet, though I have done stupid shit like spending five minutes cycling through the American Wasteland online maps to get the 10 achievement points per map. Achievement Unlocked: Spending Money on Xbox Live Gold.

[ElGuapo]

Right, I don't game to get achievements or gamescore exactly, but I love the little ding and "Achievement Unlocked" pop up. Luuuuuuuuuuuuv it.

I find it absolutely drives my play style, which might or might not be a good thing. I do know it increases replay value significantly because I'll play a game a bit more, or a bit more completionist, in order to get achievements.

Case in point: I'd actively look for COG tags in Gears of War levels, and people I was co-oping with would search or stumble upon one and we'd point out COG tags we found to each other.

[EvilIdler]

Achievement Unlocked: Spending Money on Xbox Live Gold.

If that was a progressive achievement with a few points per month, I'd bet the number of subscribers would go up.
Such is the power of achievements!

[EvilIdler]

I'll play a game a bit more, or a bit more completionist

The non-secret achievements in Hitman had me playing a lot. That's one game where 1000/1000 really DOES feel like an achievement.
Had to look up one particular achievement..how the hell did people figure that one out at all?
I get the "47", and that one I looked up just to confirm, but some of them are just insane..

GeoW's "Seriously.." achievement is also a real achievement of sorts. But not in a good way.

[ElGuapo]

Yeah, in fact I just played Blood Money the other day in order to get an achievement.

500 - 330. Suck it fulci zombie. :)

[Zylon]

"Achievement unlocked: Fully researched Spider Slicer" - OK, now I can just shoot them in the face instead of asking them to pose while I takes pictures. Gotcha.

Wait wait wait... Bioshock uses the Achievement system to relay actual gameplay-relevant information? Isn't that, like... against the rules? How would you know if you've finished researching the Cider Splicer on subsequent playthroughs?

[Andrew Mayer]

Wait wait wait... Bioshock uses the Achievement system to relay actual gameplay-relevant information? Isn't that, like... against the rules? How would you know if you've finished researching the Cider Splicer on subsequent playthroughs?

No more pictures allowed.

[JPR]

Wait wait wait... Bioshock uses the Achievement system to relay actual gameplay-relevant information? Isn't that, like... against the rules? How would you know if you've finished researching the Cider Splicer on subsequent playthroughs?

The "Cider Splicer?"

But yeah, there's an in-game popup card that tells you your research is complete, and if you try to take any more pictures of that variety of enemy, it won't let you.

Unless you haven't played the game yet, this seems like a weird question.

[Zylon]

Unless you haven't played the game yet, this seems like a weird question.

I haven't. I also have never played a 360, but my understanding of the Achievement system was that once unlocked, you never see the achievement notice again, even on subsequent playthroughs. Thus my consternation over its use as a notification mechanism.

Also, looking over the Orange Box Achievement list, is it standard practice for 360 games to hand over Achievements for things that you can't NOT do? Christ, you may as well have a "Pressed Start" or "Walked Forward" achievement.

[jim crawford]

Also, looking over the Orange Box Achievement list, is it standard practice for 360 games to hand over Achievements for things that you can't NOT do?

You can turn the game off. Maybe you've never given up on a game because it was too hard, but I certainly have.

That said, a lot of games do hand out achievements for truly trivial tasks. I did feel a little queasy when American Wasteland gave me 50 points for getting a haircut. Jonathan Blow talked about that sort of thing in a recent interview about Braid.

So there is a very conscious decision that you only get collectibles in “Braid” when you solve a puzzle, and you only get one per puzzle. Some of the puzzles are easy, some are hard; but you did something very explicit to get the reward. It’s not like “Mario” and every other game since then, when there are gold coins sprinkled everywhere, and you get them just by walking along a path or jumping up to some blocks, and that satisfies your reward-seeking reflex for now and pacifies you into continuing to play the game. I actually think that Skinnerian reward scheduling in general (which you see in most modern game design, MMOs being the canonical example) is unethical and games should not do it… scheduled rewards, to keep the player playing, are a sure sign that the core gameplay itself is not actually rewarding enough to keep them playing, and thus you are deceiving your players into wasting their lives playing your game.

It's a compelling point, but I'd still have played the hell out of the Mario series even if it had no coins, so I wouldn't say it's a sure sign at all.

Braid, by the way, is turning out to be a very pretty game. If you're reading, Jonathan, what do you say to the accusation that you're being unethical by rewarding the player for merely looking at the screen?

[Andrew Mayer]

Also, looking over the Orange Box Achievement list, is it standard practice for 360 games to hand over Achievements for things that you can't NOT do? Christ, you may as well have a "Pressed Start" or "Walked Forward" achievement.

It's standard for all achievement oriented games. It's designed to reward the player.

"You mean that witch was just giving candy to those children?!"

[Hans Lauring]

I haven't. I also have never played a 360, but my understanding of the Achievement system was that once unlocked, you never see the achievement notice again, even on subsequent playthroughs. Thus my consternation over its use as a notification mechanism.

I didn't consider this... but then I never replay games so it's not an issue.