Achivement discussion

[serrasmurf]

Hi,
Are these achievements feasible?
- draft master: common: win a draft, U: win 5 different official (quest) draft formats, R: win 15 different, M: win all (maybe tricky as every new set introduces new formats..)
- planeswalker: C: complete a challenge in a world. U: complete a challenge in all available worlds. R complete all challenges in a world. M: complete all challenges
(maybe this should be split up between winning games in every world and winning challenges anywhere)
- collector: C: collect all cards of a set. U: collect 1000 different cards.R collect every card in magic with Flying. M collect all magic cards

[Phoenix]

Hi,
Are these achievements feasible?
- collector: M collect all magic cards

This is nearly impossible.
I try achieving this within my quest at the moment. I played about 1050 duells in order to collect every card 4x and every land card 50x.
I'm far away of having all cards 1x in my quest library.

If you don't want all users playing infinite quests instead of many small and fast quests, I wouldn't implement that achievement.

jm2c

[friarsol]

If you don't want all users playing infinite quests instead of many small and fast quests, I wouldn't implement that achievement.

People can play Forge however they wish, whether that's one long quest or many short quests (or no quests at all). If a user wants to go hunting for all the different (extremely difficult) challenges, it adds a little bit more depth to the experience to have imaginary points be awarded right? Nothing is forcing you to go after the achievements. It's not like we're hiding unlockable items behind a curtain that's nearly impossible to achieve.

[KrazyTheFox]

If you don't want all users playing infinite quests instead of many small and fast quests, I wouldn't implement that achievement.

People can play Forge however they wish, whether that's one long quest or many short quests (or no quests at all). If a user wants to go hunting for all the different (extremely difficult) challenges, it adds a little bit more depth to the experience to have imaginary points be awarded right? Nothing is forcing you to go after the achievements. It's not like we're hiding unlockable items behind a curtain that's nearly impossible to achieve.

I agree with friarsol. I can't think of a reason not to have such an achievement since it doesn't have any bearing on gameplay. Additionally, there's an ever-increasing number of ways to gather cards in quest mode (I'll be dropping the prices of booster boxes soon, too, since they are way too high). I'm sure as more things get added to quest mode this achievement will be even easier.

[Marek14]

Maybe just a running total of cards you've collected, with small achievement for every 1000 unique cards and bigger one for every 5000? But not for collecting "all", for the simple reason that the number of cards is always increasing and so this achievement would become harder over time -- and that's just not what achievements are supposed to do.

Also, would this only count cards you currently have, or simply cards you HAD at some point? The collection-related achievements (like Pokedex in Pokemon games or Collector's Book in the Tales series) generally record an item once you get it, but they don't care if you use it or lose it later.

[serrasmurf]

Maybe just a running total of cards you've collected, with small achievement for every 1000 unique cards and bigger one for every 5000? But not for collecting "all", for the simple reason that the number of cards is always increasing and so this achievement would become harder over time -- and that's just not what achievements are supposed to do.

Also, would this only count cards you currently have, or simply cards you HAD at some point? The collection-related achievements (like Pokedex in Pokemon games or Collector's Book in the Tales series) generally record an item once you get it, but they don't care if you use it or lose it later.

I'm fine with wherever you take this, i think it's cooler though if you meet the achievement when you actually have the collection that fulfills the requirement.
I do think this one has a lot of depth:
- collect the 10 cards in magic that has diamond in it's name (or collect the 8 cards in magic that has "stamp" in it's name
- collect 1000 (of the 1627 available) humans
- collect a card in every colour combination (and yes, that means all the nephilim)
- museum director: collect 100 rare artifacts
- etc.

[Marek14]

serrasmurf, I spent lots of time classifying the cards in various patterns, so I know about these... though for example "Museum Director" might be a bit hard to define since the rarity of cards can differ across printings. Should Dragon Engine count, for example? Its original Antiquities printing was a common (as are reprints in Master's Edition 1 and 4), but all other paper versions (3rd-6th Edition) are rare.

So, for a collecting achievement, there are several criteria. First is the scope. There might be global achievements (from all of Magic), but also achievements based on a block or on a set. Thinking about it, collecting a whole set would be nice replacement to just collecting all cards as you could see a "hall of sets", where each row is a set and shows what achievements you got there. When a new set comes out, it would be added to the bottom and you could start achievements there.

So, what set achievements would make sense?
Collect the mythics -- from Shards of Alara onwards, each set contains mythics, which are generally small groups to collect.
Collect the lands -- there's relatively few distinct lands per set.
Then various set-specific achievements, for example in Innistrad you'd have "collect all double-faced cards", you could have "collect all cards with <set mechanic>", etc.
Another option is to collect specific cycles.

For global achievements, you could collect planeswalkers or legendary cards. Lots of creature types might be fun to collect, especially if we find some nice achievement names for them. Perhaps the achievements could be for 10/30/100/300/1000 ... with new added as the number of cards of that type grows. And what do you know, I DO happen to have my trusty list of creatures sorted by types handy...

[Marek14]

Here's a fun idea:

Ouija Board - collect a Spirit starting with every letter of the alphabet.
Magical Runes - collect a Wizard starting with every letter of the alphabet.

These two creature types seem to be the only ones possible for such achievement, as none of the other types has all requisite cards (not even Human -- there are no Humans starting with Q).

Here are example collections:

Spirits: Accursed Spirit, Balefire Liege, Callous Deceiver, Dancing Scimitar, Earthshaker, Feral Deceiver, Gallows Warden, Hana Kami, Iname as One, Jetting Glasskite, Kabuto Moth, Lantern Kami, Malignus, Nether Shadow, Obzedat, Ghost Council; Pain Kami, Quillmane Baku, Radiant Essence, Sandsower, Tallowisp, Urborg Phantom, Vassal Soul, Wall of Reverence, Xenic Poltergeist, Yew Spirit, Zephyr Spirit (Quillmane Baku, Xenic Poltergeist and Zephyr Spirit being unique).

Wizards: Academy Elite, Balduvian Conjurer, Cabal Interrogator, Dakmor Sorceress, Echo Mage, Faerie Harbinger, Galepowder Mage, Hakim, Loreweaver; Imagecrafter, Jace's Archivist, Kaho, Minamo Historian; Laboratory Maniac, Maga, Traitor to Mortals; Nameless One, Oboro Breezecaller, Pain Seer, Qasali Pridemage, Rage Weaver, Sadistic Augermage, Talas Researcher, Umbra Mystic, Vectis Dominator, Wandering Graybeard, Xathrid Necromancer, Yixlid Jailer, Zameck Guildmage (Qasali Pridemage and Yixlid Jailer being unique).

[Phoenix]

Despite my last "get an achievement for collecting cards is bad" post after your discussion I have to admin that it's a good idea. But I still think that counting all cards is not very helpful since there would always be new sets/cards.

So, for a collecting achievement, there are several criteria. First is the scope. There might be global achievements (from all of Magic), but also achievements based on a block or on a set. Thinking about it, collecting a whole set would be nice replacement to just collecting all cards as you could see a "hall of sets", where each row is a set and shows what achievements you got there. When a new set comes out, it would be added to the bottom and you could start achievements there.

This way should be best to implement card collection achievements. You have to adapt it every times a new set comes out or you implement it dynamically.
Stages could be:
- Common: Own 1 card of set e.g. "LEA"
- Uncommon: Own 1 card of each type (land, creature, instant, sorcery, enchantment, {planeswalker}, ....) of set e.g. "LEA"
- Rare: Own 1 instance of every card of set e.g. "LEA"
- Mystic: Own 50 instances of every land card and 4 instances of every other card type of set e.g. "LEA"

[Marek14]

Despite my last "get an achievement for collecting cards is bad" post after your discussion I have to admin that it's a good idea. But I still think that counting all cards is not very helpful since there would always be new sets/cards.

So, for a collecting achievement, there are several criteria. First is the scope. There might be global achievements (from all of Magic), but also achievements based on a block or on a set. Thinking about it, collecting a whole set would be nice replacement to just collecting all cards as you could see a "hall of sets", where each row is a set and shows what achievements you got there. When a new set comes out, it would be added to the bottom and you could start achievements there.

This way should be best to implement card collection achievements. You have to adapt it every times a new set comes out or you implement it dynamically.
Stages could be:
- Common: Own 1 card of set e.g. "LEA"
- Uncommon: Own 1 card of each type (land, creature, instant, sorcery, enchantment, {planeswalker}, ....) of set e.g. "LEA"
- Rare: Own 1 instance of every card of set e.g. "LEA"
- Mystic: Own 50 instances of every land card and 4 instances of every other card type of set e.g. "LEA"

Mystic should maybe be 50 instances of basic lands, not all lands.

[serrasmurf]

serrasmurf, I spent lots of time classifying the cards in various patterns, so I know about these... though for example "Museum Director" might be a bit hard to define since the rarity of cards can differ across printings. Should Dragon Engine count, for example? Its original Antiquities printing was a common (as are reprints in Master's Edition 1 and 4), but all other paper versions (3rd-6th Edition) are rare.

Forge knows if the version you have is rare, shouldn't that suffice?

You need an easy achievement and a ridiculous one (all cards in magic), but specially the medium achievements
should be fun to put chase. Hence the diamonds and the artifacts; like your alphabet idea!

New idea: collector -> general:
collect 10.000 soldiers! they don't have to be unique, just by some booster boxes of onslaugh block

[drdev]

Just to chime in on this discussion, my thought is we could do 1 overall cards achievement with 4 tiers (e.g. 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000 cards), 1 tiered achievement for each rarity (e.g. 10, 20, 30, 50 mythics), and 1 tiered achievement for each set (collect 1, 2, 3, 4x each card in a set).

Alternatively (or in addition) we could have set achievements based on rarity, so you'd get a Common trophy for collecting 1 of each common, an Uncommon trophy for collecting 1 of each common and uncommon, a Rare trophy for collecting 1 of each common, uncommon, and rare, and a Mythic for collecting all cards in a set. Or perhaps we combine those ideas and introduce 3 additional tiers for collecting 2x, 3x, and 4x each card in a set (Mythic 2, Mythic 3, and Mythic 4?). We could still reuse the same Mythic pedestal but maybe create special 2x, 3x, and 4x overlays that could be displayed on top somehow?

Or perhaps easier (particularly since many sets have no mythics), we could split the difference and make the achievement award Common for 1x all commons in a set, Uncommon for 1x all commons/uncommons in a set, Rare for 1x all cards in a set, and then Mythic for getting 4x each card in a set.

I believe these achievements should not count against you for selling cards, but unfortunately it will not be possible to account for sold cards of existing quests. Is everyone ok with that?

Also, for the set achievements, how should we handle implementing cards previously missing from sets. I'm worried somebody could go to all the trouble of earning a 4x each card achievement for a set that's missing a card (due to implementation difficulties), later we implement that card finally, will his trophy go away (or be downgraded based on the card's rarity)?

[Agetian]

Sounds good to me!

- Agetian

[Marek14]

Just to chime in on this discussion, my thought is we could do 1 overall cards achievement with 4 tiers (e.g. 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000 cards), 1 tiered achievement for each rarity (e.g. 10, 20, 30, 50 mythics), and 1 tiered achievement for each set (collect 1, 2, 3, 4x each card in a set).

Alternatively (or in addition) we could have set achievements based on rarity, so you'd get a Common trophy for collecting 1 of each common, an Uncommon trophy for collecting 1 of each common and uncommon, a Rare trophy for collecting 1 of each common, uncommon, and rare, and a Mythic for collecting all cards in a set. Or perhaps we combine those ideas and introduce 3 additional tiers for collecting 2x, 3x, and 4x each card in a set (Mythic 2, Mythic 3, and Mythic 4?). We could still reuse the same Mythic pedestal but maybe create special 2x, 3x, and 4x overlays that could be displayed on top somehow?

Or perhaps easier (particularly since many sets have no mythics), we could split the difference and make the achievement award Common for 1x all commons in a set, Uncommon for 1x all commons/uncommons in a set, Rare for 1x all cards in a set, and then Mythic for getting 4x each card in a set.

I believe these achievements should not count against you for selling cards, but unfortunately it will not be possible to account for sold cards of existing quests. Is everyone ok with that?

Also, for the set achievements, how should we handle implementing cards previously missing from sets. I'm worried somebody could go to all the trouble of earning a 4x each card achievement for a set that's missing a card (due to implementation difficulties), later we implement that card finally, will his trophy go away (or be downgraded based on the card's rarity)?

For missing cards from sets, the achievements might show with "Provisional" in their names to signify that they are subject to change in future. When the set is complete, the provisional achievements would be deleted and replaced by the true ones.

[serrasmurf]

....Is everyone ok with that?

That looks very solid!

I do think that several users will also like the funny collectors achievements, as they give you a dedicated quest within your quest, so you might consider making an extra achievement for that.

I split the world/challenges idea:

Nicol Bolas (a planeswalker who likes a fight):
C: win 1 challenge
U: win 5 unique challenges
R: win 25 unique challenges
M: win all the current 64 unique official challenges
these will automatically bring you across all the worlds and encourage you to "finish" those, so we won;t have to define that specifically

Ajani (is he the one that travels so much?)
C: win a match in 2 different worlds
U: win 5 matches in every world (or the 5 official we have now)
R: win 3 matches at hard level in these worlds
M: win 5 matches at very hard level in these worlds