Achievements & The Poll-System

[Sylveria]

I want to share my thoughts on the current poll about achievements and the poll-system in general.

1.) The Achievement system

Currently there's a poll running about the addition of achievements and i have some major concerns about it. Not about achievements as they are, but what they will cause. I am concerned that a lot of people only might see the short term benefits and not the down sides to them.

- as the time showed on the official servers: Achievements weren't simply something that you "can" do, but at some point you "have to" do. They're a ticket, since players will eventually gatekeep content if you don't have certain achievements, this will split the community heavily and players will no longer be able to play the game as they want to.
Example: MC-PUG looking for members. They require you to already have cleared MC, so they know that you know the mechanics. But how can you go there? People would say: "go with a guild". well. but you rather wanna stay guildless. Welp. Tough Luck. Guess you'll be excluded from every getting into any MC-PUG. (and yes. such things did happen on other servers, even the official ones)

- a permanent "task book": Some players eventually want do be "done" with things. While Achievements can give you some addtional tasks, some people will never feel like they're "done". It's like a 2nd questlog that one will never be able to be done with. This heavily influences how the game and is perceived. Goals will no longer be intrinsic, but extrinsic. This achievement menu will tell you if you're done. (I admit, this will mostly concern a certain group of players, that i am counting myself in though, but i also think it **heavily** alters the feel of "Classic".)

- it's (what i call it) a "Pandora-Feature". you cannot put it into the game and say "Let's see how it works out". Once in the game, you will probably never get it out again, even if it causes issues.


2.) The poll-system

While it might be a democratic system, i have major concerns about it since it will *favor popularity over quality*. Not everyone has the same amount of informations and not everyone sees every up- or downside to certain ideas that will be put out for vote.
People can campaign for certain votes that might not be in the best interest for the server and the community *in the long term*, else we *might* geht Summoning Stones at some point, oder even insta-ports to the dungeons, if such things would ever be put out for vote.

Another thing: Such an ingame-vote-system leaves little to no room for discussions, to exchange why or why not to vote for something. World Chat? Yeah you might see the opinions of the last 2 minutes. And (sorry dear community) as we all know the world-chat is full of trolls.

I'd rather vote for the dev-team to decide, even if such decisions take a long time, but i have faith in them. If any polls, I'd suggest to do these here on the forums, where people can discuss about them.

[Reiker]

Example: MC-PUG looking for members. They require you to already have cleared MC, so they know that you know the mechanics.

People can already choose not to invite people to raids based on gear / knowledge / attitude, etc. I don't see how achievements would change any of that.

While Achievements can give you some addtional tasks, some people will never feel like they're "done". It's like a 2nd questlog that one will never be able to be done with.

Again, I don't see how achievements change anything. 99.99% of players will never complete every quest in the game, and they don't care. Should the game have no quests just because an extreme minority will feel compelled to complete every quest?

Not everyone has the same amount of informations and not everyone sees every up- or downside to certain ideas that will be put out for vote.

And some people still get a vote even if they have nonsensical opinions like "achievements will make it impossible for me to get into an MC pug." That's just how democracy works. If there was something really controversial up for vote then there would be more discussion about it in-game. The disable tmog votes from old Twow are an example of this.

[Kaycheng]

An achievement system can be available, supporting the diversification of the game.

[Arsarcana]

I completely agree with Sylveria's concerns, especially because I think many people are looking only at what achievements add, not at what they slowly change.

To me, the biggest issue isn't the achievement system itself. It's the culture that grows around it. It has every chance of becoming a player's resume or the game's official definition of progress.

People can already choose not to invite people to raids based on gear / knowledge / attitude

That's true. The difference is that achievements become official and instant proof. They turn experience into something you can verify with one click instead of talking to the player. This may quickly become another requirement for joining groups, making it much harder for newer or more casual players to get into content in the first place.

Motivation is another important point.
Achievements dont simply add optional things to do. Those things are already there. An achievement system doesn't create new gameplay. It mostly adds a score to gameplay that already exists.
For example, I wanted to explore the world, so I did. I earned the Cartographer title because I wanted to, not because I expected points or a pop-up telling me I did a good job. The game let me create my own goal, and that felt rewarding enough. If i would like to collect all toads i also dont need any point for that.
Achievements change that. They replace personal goals with system goals. Instead of doing something because you genuinely want to, there's always another number to increase, another checkbox to complete.
For some people that won't matter. For others - including me - it completely changes how the game feels.

One of the reasons I enjoy Vanilla is that the game never tells me when I'm "finished." I decide that myself. An achievement system quietly changes that philosophy. Suddenly the game starts measuring your journey with percentages and achievement points, even if those points don't actually do anything.
That's one of the reasons Vanilla feels different from later expansions. Your story is your own. It isn't reduced to a score.

Finally, I also agree with the concerns about the voting system.
Yes, most players naturally vote for what sounds fun today. That's completely understandable. Long-term consequences are much harder to see - sometimes people genuinely don't recognize them until years later.

The biggest problem is that this isn't an experiment. We've seen this happen in many games before. Features that seem harmless at first slowly change the identity of the game. Eventually, it no longer feels like the game people originally fell in love with. If achievements become part of the game and later turn out to hurt the community, removing them will be far more difficult than simply deciding not to add them in the first place.
Some features are easy to test and revert. Achievements are not one of them.

[Denin]

I mostly agree with Sylveria too.

For one i see achieves as fake fluff content and players will end up abusing it if it's anything like wraths achievement system. It is terrible for community imo.

But i never liked achievement systems to begin with, i don't need the game to give me achievements to do things.

I voted no the instant i saw this, i would be sad if it goes through.

Of course there is a chance it doesn't play out like it did in wrath, but chance seem far higher that it would.

If i want systems like that i would play any modern mmo really as they are all full of stuff like that and to me it is part of what makes them lesser games.

Vanilla wow is about as modern an mmorpg as i allow myself to play, i simply don't like the modern styles. I enjoy vanilla + but make it too *modern* and it would reduce my enjoyment instead of adding to it.

This is all personal opinion of course, i understand that others really do like systems like this but i still hope this vote goes in the negative.

[Darktifa]

Allow achievements if community desires it,
but give the option to either hide it from others or disable it at all...

[Dzielkus]

It's a lot of workload for devs, totally not needed workload.
You already have achi in the game - various titles which indicate, gently, your time spent in game.

[Defiant]

- as the time showed on the official servers: Achievements weren't simply something that you "can" do, but at some point you "have to" do.

I hear this complaint or variants of it pretty frequently. I feel its a flawed argument.

The player base isnt some cohesive hive mind. Yes there will always be elitists and high end players trying to weed out those who dont put in the same amount of time and effort that they do-- however thats entirely their right. No one is owed a spot in any raid group.

But that said-- and this is especially true on Turtle/Octo with the pretty solid community that we have-- there are a ton of more casual groups. Thats also true on official as well.

However what I feel the true issue is here is that a lot of the people complaining about high standards are low standard players specifically trying to join high standard groups. I saw this a lot in my time on Blizzard servers and talking with people who were complaining about this stuff. Often people seek out the more organized groups, the more successful groups, because ultimately they dont want to deal with progression runs with a team of other more casual style players. I dont really see any other reason for there even being an issue because its *never* been the case on any iteration of World of Warcraft that *every* raid or guild had those high standards. There have always been a lot of welcoming casual friendly guilds. They have and always will exist. So the only reason for someone to make this complaint is if they arent happy with the strugglefest that a casual guild may or may not experience. They want to play along side people that treat the game like a second job without putting that level of effort in themselves.

I run a guild that I consider to be casual friendly. We try to take things seriously as to avoid wasting everyone's time but we are definitely not try hards. We are welcoming to pretty much anyone but we do gear checks for example. If people are severely under performing we don't just boot them, we try and work with them. In all our time on Twow I think we had two people that performed so badly it was an issue. And we likely had over 200 people coming and going from our raids over the couple years that we operated before the shut down.

Anyways with all that said I think its a really bad reason to avoid achievements altogether. Because even without achievements you will still have guilds doing thorough gear checks. I don't see it changing anything in that regard.

[Arsarcana]

Allow achievements if community desires it,
but give the option to either hide it from others or disable it at all...

Hiding achievements doesn't solve the problem I'm talking about. The issue isn't privacy. The issue is standardization.
Addons are a perfect example. They aren't part of the game, yet many raid leaders already expect players to have them. Players are constantly asked to install specific addons before being allowed into raids. If achievements become another standardized metric, hiding them won't change much. It will simply become: "Please unhide your achievements." or "Why are they hidden?" The social pressure remains exactly the same.

As for "if the community desires it" - how do we know what the community actually wants?
This is one of my concerns with the current poll. Players are only being asked whether they would like achievements. They are not being asked whether they are comfortable with the long-term changes that achievement systems have historically brought to MMO communities.
The poll presents the feature itself, but not its cost. If you ask people: "Would you like titles, cosmetics, and achievement points?" then of course many people will answer "yes". But that's a very different question from: "Would you like a visible progression system that may gradually become another way of evaluating players?"

[Arsarcana]

- as the time showed on the official servers: Achievements weren't simply something that you "can" do, but at some point you "have to" do.

I hear this complaint or variants of it pretty frequently. I feel its a flawed argument.

The player base isnt some cohesive hive mind. Yes there will always be elitists and high end players trying to weed out those who dont put in the same amount of time and effort that they do-- however thats entirely their right. No one is owed a spot in any raid group.

But that said-- and this is especially true on Turtle/Octo with the pretty solid community that we have-- there are a ton of more casual groups. Thats also true on official as well.

However what I feel the true issue is here is that a lot of the people complaining about high standards are low standard players specifically trying to join high standard groups. I saw this a lot in my time on Blizzard servers and talking with people who were complaining about this stuff. Often people seek out the more organized groups, the more successful groups, because ultimately they dont want to deal with progression runs with a team of other more casual style players. I dont really see any other reason for there even being an issue because its *never* been the case on any iteration of World of Warcraft that *every* raid or guild had those high standards. There have always been a lot of welcoming casual friendly guilds. They have and always will exist. So the only reason for someone to make this complaint is if they arent happy with the strugglefest that a casual guild may or may not experience. They want to play along side people that treat the game like a second job without putting that level of effort in themselves.

I run a guild that I consider to be casual friendly. We try to take things seriously as to avoid wasting everyone's time but we are definitely not try hards. We are welcoming to pretty much anyone but we do gear checks for example. If people are severely under performing we don't just boot them, we try and work with them. In all our time on Twow I think we had two people that performed so badly it was an issue. And we likely had over 200 people coming and going from our raids over the couple years that we operated before the shut down.

Anyways with all that said I think its a really bad reason to avoid achievements altogether. Because even without achievements you will still have guilds doing thorough gear checks. I don't see it changing anything in that regard.

I think you're answering a completely different argument than the one Sylveria (and I) are making.
Nobody here is saying that raid leaders shouldn't have standards. Nobody is arguing that everyone deserves a raid spot. The concern is not raid leadership. The concern is community culture. Gear checks and achievements are not the same thing. Gear checks evaluate your character's current state. Achievements evaluate your history. Those are fundamentally different filters. Community behavior changes over time.

Nobody officially required addons either. Yet many of them eventually became expected simply because the community adopted them. Achievements can follow exactly the same path. Players already use every available metric to evaluate each other. Gear is one of them. Achievements would simply become another one.
If achievements truly change nothing, then they also add nothing. If they are worth implementing, then by definition they change player behavior in some way. That's exactly why we're discussing their long-term impact.

Again, the concern is not:
"I want to join raids without putting in effort."
The concern is:
"Do we want Vanilla to gradually become another game where a player's progress is summarized by a visible score that other players can immediately judge?"

The problem is that your conclusion is based on personal belief: "I don't see it changing anything."
Ours is based on observing what happened in other MMO after similar systems were introduced.
If we're discussing long-term design decisions, I think past examples are stronger evidence than personal intuition.
“Don’t see” is not an argument. It’s a conclusion, not the reasoning behind it.