Topic 1: Multiplayer Achievements - "Get/play this many kills/games" Edition, part 1

By Cleaner7 08-24-2008 07:23 AM
Updated by Cleaner7 08-24-2008 07:51 AM

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I've decided to start a Specific Blog Series about Xbox 360 Achievements. This is the first of who knows how many. The number isn't set and I will blog as the ideas come. A few ideas are already planned so please keep discussion on the specific topic and try to avoid the already planned ideas below. Thank you and I hope you enjoy!

Here is Topic 1: Multiplayer Achievements - "Get/play this many kills/games" Edition

2: Creative Achievements
3: Easiest Achievements
4: Impossible Achievements
5: Proudest Achievements
6: Stackable Achievements
7: Secret Achievements
8: Mandatory Achievements

P.S. I may (and probably will change the order) depending on feedback and my mood.

P.S.S. This blog ended up being REALLY long and I hope that the future ones will be MUCH shorter. I didn't know I had such strong feelings when it came to this topic.

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What is an Achievement?
When I think of a general definition for the word "achievement" I think of "something that requires a significant amount of dedication to obtain". With the creation of Achievements on the 360 this is generally not the case.

Most games that have many achievements usually have them span the difficulty spectrum from very easy to attainable to hard to nearly impossible. This is fine since I feel that most companies just bullshit their achievements since Microsoft made them mandatory for every game. That's what makes the truly creative ones so great. (I'll leave it at that since that's the topic for a different edition.)

Multiplayer Achievements - Required Amount of "Something"
For the past few days I've been thinking about online multiplayer achievements in games.
Specifically, the achievements that require you to kill this many opponents, capture/collect this many flags/points/items, and/or play/win this many games. The most obvious offenders are FPS games. Here are a few of many possible examples:

The Darkness
1. "The Don" - Be on the winning side in 250 multiplayer matches.
Comment: Not too bad in terms of quantity, but considering hardly any people play this game, it makes it difficult to earn.
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
1. "Veteran" - Participate in 500 game sessions.
Comment: Again, a lack of players and/or game sessions makes this difficult to achieve.
Quake 4
1. "Seasoned Warrior" - Played over 5000 ranked matches.
2. "General - Multiplayer" - Over 5000 win points in ranked matches.
3. "Rhino Squad" - Over 10000 frags in ranked matches.
Comment: Okay, now this is getting ridiculous! Not only do you need to play over 5000 matches, but you also need to get 5000 win(s)(?). WTF?! Plus you better get some kills in those games or else you'll be playing a lot more.
Perfect Dark Zero
1. "Played 1000 DarkOps Games Multiplayer Award." - Played in 1000 DarkOps Games.
2. "Played 1000 Deathmatch Games Multiplayer Award." - Played in 1000 DeathMatch Games.
Comment: 1000 games in 1 gametype is bad enough, but considering PDZ has at least 3 (each requiring its own achievement) makes it just plain mean. I know Rare wants us to experience each gametype fully, but 1000 times fully? That's a bit much. Plus, again, PDZ doesn't have the biggest community. It doesn't even break the top 10 played games on Live every week.
Gears of War
1. "Green Thumb" - Win 20 multiplayer matches of 3+ rounds in any game type on the Garden multiplayer map.
2. "THIS! IS! ANNEX!" - Complete 100 multiplayer matches of 3+ rounds in Annex and capture 3 objectives in each match.
3. "Seriously..." Kill 10,000 people in versus ranked match total.
Comment: Another developer that wants you to fully experience everything in the game. Not so bad unless you hate certain maps like I do (Garden anyone?) or don't feel like dedicating hundreds of hours of your life to.

On average, a 3-round game of Annex takes 30-40 minutes, assuming you go 3-0 or 3-1 and each round takes about 10 minutes. Now multiply that times 100 and you're looking at ~50-67 hrs on Annex alone. That's also assuming that your team is decent enough to not get raped and no one quits on your team (which happens often enough) and you get the required 3 captures in order for it to count towards your achievement. The beauty is that you get a ton of kills in Annex with the whole infinite respawn. The downside? Your kills in Annex don't count towards the Seriously achievement. Wait, WHAT?!?!

That's right! Besides the 50-67 (minimum) hours required for Annex, you still have to get 10,000 kills! Oh joy! you, Epic! Oh and don't forget to switch weapons in between all those games for the required 100 kills with each weapon achievements. Hey, at least the community is still alive, right?
Gears of War (PC)
1. "Not So Serious ..." - Kill 10,000 people in versus player match total.
Comment: Well I have to give Epic a pat on the back for listening to all the complaints about only being able to get the "Seriously" achievement in ranked matches, a point I forgot to add to my last paragraph. As a result, they decided to add the above achievement so you can now kill your friends and other strangers in the comfort of Player Matches. Well this is all well and good, except they still left in the "Seriously" achievement on top of that. You mean I have to kill 20,000 people now? you, Epic! NO, SERIOUSLY, FUCK YOU! Way to defeat the whole point of "Not So Serious..."

With the recent announcement of "Seriously 2.0" for Gears of War 2 that requires 100,000 kills (no that's not a typo, it IS 100K) and rumors that only 1 kill per round per weapon will count towards all the weapons achievements, it makes me a very sad panda. :( Luckily, Epic did learn from their previous mistakes and now every kill from every gametype (online/offline, player/ranked) will count towards the achievement. I guess we'll see in November.
GRAW
1. "Heavyweight (Multiplayer)" - Get a total of 10,000 kills in multiplayer.
2. "Committed (Multiplayer)" - Play for 8 hours straight in multiplayer.
Comment: We already covered "Seriously" and "Not So Serious" above so I won't bother with repeating that for GRAW's 1st achievement. However, the 2nd achievement is just genius! Let's leave my Xbox on for 8 hours straight and see if it survives the heat and doesn't get the RROD. Now that's the real achievement!

Now I LOVE my Xbox 360, but there's no denying its bad design. I experienced the RROD this spring and I have to say that now I'm always worried about the day my Xbox will die. Sure it was covered under the 3 year warranty by Microsoft and they sent it back to me in working order, but I surely wouldn't want to play endlessly for 8 hours straight just for some crummy achievement.

These are all multiplayer achievements that are really time consuming just for the sake of it. Now that sounds similar to my earlier definition, but it's not exactly what I had in mind.

To Be Continued in Part 2...