ACEs - Achievement Challenge Events - please vote

[stormerne]

Proposal: Let’s have an achievement challenge event – “ACE” – say once a week. Although similar in some ways to the Gauntlet and Game of the Month challenges that already exist for other games, in this case we would be completing additional Steam-like achievements but without any Steam involvement.

How it could work: Every week, we submit ideas for new achievement challenges to a forum thread and we vote on one or more challenges for the next week. Once decided, we go play and we post screenshots and/or saves to specific threads, one thread per challenge.

Timing: Although we vote weekly on new challenges, people can attempt and complete them retrospectively and in any order. Thus someone coming to CFC in a year’s time could still catch up. And we can come up with more than one good idea at a time; we just aim for at least one new challenge a week.

Scoring: Game score and year/turn of completion will not matter (unless we decide otherwise for one particular event). You just get one point per achievement, like we do now for Steam achievements, unless we vote that some achievements are worth two or maybe even three points. We could maintain a roll of honor for accumulated ACEs.

What kind of challenges? They could range from simple or crazy (“Ice Man: Build a size 12 city on an isolated snow island”) to more substantial (“Puppet Master: Puppet all 16 city states in a standard 8 civ game”).

Why am I suggesting this? When you’ve done all the Steam achievements apart from the bugged ones, all that’s left are the tedious counts of tiles and temples etc. that will pop eventually anyway. But if you liked some of the achievements, whether they were quirky or challenging, it would be nice to have regular fresh challenges. It’s nearly 10 years since I had the original idea and suggested the “game of the month” concept for Civ2. It was enthusiastically received and other people implemented it quickly. (I still remember the long discussions I had with Matrix in working out an early finish scoring algorithm.) I’m so glad the GOTM idea is still going strong. The ACE idea for Civ5 is simpler, but could be just as much fun and could last just as long. And I like the idea that we suggest the achievements ourselves and decide democratically on them, rather than their just appearing as prescribed by someone else.

Please vote on whether you like this idea.

 

[testdummy653]

This could be alot of fun, give me some other achievements, to go for... maybe help me stop trying to get all those TF2 achievements...

 

[stormerne]

Well, at the time of writing there are 22 votes, yet 10 times as many views of the thread! Of those that voted there's an even split between like and dislike but only 7 people who'd actually want to try it.

So what do we want to do? Is 7 enough to make this worthwhile and fun? Perhaps more people would follow on later. Perhaps the two people who also offered to help administer it would like to step forward and comment. (Neither one was me!)

 

[Methos]

Proposal: Let’s have an achievement challenge event – “ACE” – say once a week. Although similar in some ways to the Gauntlet and Game of the Month challenges that already exist for other games, in this case we would be completing additional Steam-like achievements but without any Steam involvement.

This sounds very interesting, though with all of the current Steam events, its going to be difficult and odd coming up with new ones.

How it could work: Every week, we submit ideas for new achievement challenges to a forum thread and we vote on one or more challenges for the next week. Once decided, we go play and we post screenshots and/or saves to specific threads, one thread per challenge.

In case of ties, the admin, or some position, would have to be the tie breaker and they must be around during the "release" time to make sure its timely.

Timing: Although we vote weekly on new challenges, people can attempt and complete them retrospectively and in any order. Thus someone coming to CFC in a year’s time could still catch up. And we can come up with more than one good idea at a time; we just aim for at least one new challenge a week.

I'm glad that you're suggestin an open-ended challenge. As we've found in the HOF, not everyone has the time to finish a game, sometimes even play, in a week. I also think you need to pick a specific time to release each new challenge each week, so that everyone isn't waiting and wondering when the next one will be released.

Scoring: Game score and year/turn of completion will not matter (unless we decide otherwise for one particular event). You just get one point per achievement, like we do now for Steam achievements, unless we vote that some achievements are worth two or maybe even three points. We could maintain a roll of honor for accumulated ACEs.

I like this, though whomever it is that's going to double check games/screenshots to make sure no one is cheating (assuming you're doing that), could be time consuming.

What kind of challenges? They could range from simple or crazy (“Ice Man: Build a size 12 city on an isolated snow island&#8221 to more substantial (“Puppet Master: Puppet all 16 city states in a standard 8 civ game&#8221.

I worry that eventually most of the challenges will lean towards the foolish side.

It does sound interesting. Edit: I haven't voted, as I'm still unsure of my own time commitments.

 

[evrett37]

A large portion of the community dislikes steam. Perhaps you should take your event to the Steam forums where you arnt throwing it in peoples faces.

 

[stormerne]

A large portion of the community dislikes steam. Perhaps you should take your event to the Steam forums where you arnt throwing it in peoples faces.

This idea would be completely independent of Steam. It's something that we could even have done years ago using Civ1 if we wanted. It wouldn't belong on Steam forums. It's to do simply with quests we set ourselves. Its implementation may belong in its own forum - just like GOTM did eventually - but the discussion about it beforehand belongs squarely in this one, don't you think?

 

[stormerne]

This sounds very interesting.

Thanks Methos for all your constructive and encouraging comments. They're much appreciated.

As for new ideas for achievements, we'd have to see. I doubt we'd end up with the inanities of some of the Steam ones. But at least we'd be deciding for ourselves which we wanted to try.

If we started this, it may die in a few weeks or it may thrive - who knows. When I first put forward the idea for GOTM, I had no clue it would still be here 10 years later!

 

[Pouakai]

I love this idea, and would be more than happy to help. May I suggest the following?

Seperate forum on CFC: This is just so we can have a list of the achievements, with the date, and seperate threads for each person / event

Images: Could we get someone with artistic talent to come up with images for each one?

 

[Cywil]

Timing: Although we vote weekly on new challenges, people can attempt and complete them retrospectively and in any order. Thus someone coming to CFC in a year’s time could still catch up. And we can come up with more than one good idea at a time; we just aim for at least one new challenge a week.

monthly, not weekly

 

[testdummy653]

monthly, not weekly

Yeah i'm going to agree on this one, monthly would be better off than weekly....

stormerne,
How many votes will you need to make this happen, or what is your goal percentage?

 

[stormerne]

Images: Could we get someone with artistic talent to come up with images for each one?

I hadn't thought of this, but it's easily done if we want it. My wife's a professional artist (as well as a Civ appreciator) and says she's happy to help.

How many votes will you need to make this happen, or what is your goal percentage?

I was a little disappointed at first with the response. But it has certainly picked up. I suspect we're now at a stage where it could happen. Certainly I think there's nothing to lose by giving it a shot.

Are you one of the people who is volunteering to help admin? If so, let's discuss how best to implement it.

One thing that's clear to me is this forum is not its real home after any initial discussions. And it's too early to say whether it deserves its own forum; that will depend on sustained popularity - or not. But maybe it should go in Civ5 GOTM or Civ5 HOF temporarily.

Notice to mods! Your comments on that last thought would be valued please!

 

[Set]

I voted to participate but cywil and testdummy are right, monthly not weekly would be better

 

[stormerne]

I voted to participate but cywil and testdummy are right, monthly not weekly would be better

That would be a good sign because it would reflect substantial achievements (rather than foolish as Methos feared).

On the other hand, with no time limit on achievements, and the ability to go back and do one's you missed, it seemed at first that there was no disadvantage to weekly. And I knew, for example, I went from 38 to 96 Steam achievements in the last two weeks alone.

But if we have the discussion of new ideas for achievements just once a month, and come up with several new ones each time, then I can understand that would probably be better, and it would leave us more time to get on and do them!

 

[testdummy653]

That would be a good sign because it would reflect substantial achievements (rather than foolish as Methos feared).

On the other hand, with no time limit on achievements, and the ability to go back and do one's you missed, it seemed at first that there was no disadvantage to weekly. And I knew, for example, I went from 38 to 96 Steam achievements in the last two weeks alone.

But if we have the discussion of new ideas for achievements just once a month, and come up with several new ones each time, then I can understand that would probably be better, and it would leave us more time to get on and do them!

I did say yes to helping Admin (tentatively), but i think you might want to clarify exactly a Admin role entails.

I really do like the idea of going back and being able to do old achievements, this will encourage new players that haven't done some of the achievements, to go do those and still get credit.

Edit: The_J loves visiting my profile, I'm sure he'll visit this thread soon enough

 

[Methos]

Notice to mods! Your comments on that last thought would be valued please!

Definitely not the HOF and I can't speak for the GOTM Staff.

I did say yes to helping Admin (tentatively), but i think you might want to clarify exactly a Admin role entails.

Yes, it would be nice if you clarified the admins role. I was tempted to vote to help for admin too, but one, I wasn't sure about my time commitments and two, I'm not sure what the job entails. Edit: Or how many admin you'll need, or other jobs/positions.

 

[Pouakai]

Could we also have achievements similar to ingame ones, such as 'Win a game on Fractal map type', 'Win a game as Genghis Khan'

 

[stormerne]

To see what the admin load is, let’s go through one way it could work. You may have other ideas.

During a month, we make suggestions to an ideas thread and discuss them at leisure. We can also discuss whether or not certain tougher challenges should be worth more than a single achievement point. At the end of a month (doesn’t have to be the end of a calendar month of course), one admin collates these ideas and puts them to a single combined multi-checkbox vote. The ones that get sufficient support are put, by that admin, on the running list of achievement challenges. That list only ever gets longer. (It would be nice as a separate webpage but we’ll go with what we can get!) As someone suggested, we can add artwork for these too.

Then people go away and try the challenges plus any uncompleted challenges they want from previous months. For each achieved challenge they post their saved game to communal threads, one thread per challenge. All the admin helpers could monitor those threads, and when one has the time they acknowledge the game-save in-thread (to ensure only one person checks it) and they attempt to verify the achievement. If the achievement is verified, that admin also puts the player’s name against the achievement on the aforementioned list. If it’s not verified they can contact the player privately.

It would also be good to maintain a roll of honor for players with the highest number of achievements as a running total over time. That could either be done by a separate person scanning the achievement list or by verifiers when they update the achievement list. Due account can be taken of any achievements that we’d decided were worth 2 or 3 points rather than 1.

In addition to this, and depending on which forum this lives, one or more admins could act as moderator for the discussions threads – unless this was simply part of the normal forum mod’s duties.

So to summarize, the admin helpers are needed for (1) collating ideas, organizing a vote and updating the challenge list, (2) verifying achievements from game-saves and updating the list of achievers against each challenge, and (3) updating the roll of honor.

 

[testdummy653]

Spoiler :

To see what the admin load is, let’s go through one way it could work. You may have other ideas.

During a month, we make suggestions to an ideas thread and discuss them at leisure. We can also discuss whether or not certain tougher challenges should be worth more than a single achievement point. At the end of a month (doesn’t have to be the end of a calendar month of course), one admin collates these ideas and puts them to a single combined multi-checkbox vote. The ones that get sufficient support are put, by that admin, on the running list of achievement challenges. That list only ever gets longer. (It would be nice as a separate webpage but we’ll go with what we can get!) As someone suggested, we can add artwork for these too.

Then people go away and try the challenges plus any uncompleted challenges they want from previous months. For each achieved challenge they post their saved game to communal threads, one thread per challenge. All the admin helpers could monitor those threads, and when one has the time they acknowledge the game-save in-thread (to ensure only one person checks it) and they attempt to verify the achievement. If the achievement is verified, that admin also puts the player’s name against the achievement on the aforementioned list. If it’s not verified they can contact the player privately.

It would also be good to maintain a roll of honor for players with the highest number of achievements as a running total over time. That could either be done by a separate person scanning the achievement list or by verifiers when they update the achievement list. Due account can be taken of any achievements that we’d decided were worth 2 or 3 points rather than 1.

In addition to this, and depending on which forum this lives, one or more admins could act as moderator for the discussions threads – unless this was simply part of the normal forum mod’s duties.

So to summarize, the admin helpers are needed for (1) collating ideas, organizing a vote and updating the challenge list, (2) verifying achievements from game-saves and updating the list of achievers against each challenge, and (3) updating the roll of honor.

Okay, I can definitely help with stuff like this.

 

[shanodin]

This sounds great, something I'd love to play I really enjoy getting the Steam achievements, especially if I was aiming for it (though the 'win a game on prince' one still eludes me...)

Would people have to play on a set difficulty level? Or would higher levels be worth more? As a low-level player I'd find it hard to participate if it was limited to prince or whatever. I'm sure that on the other hand, better players would be bored by the ease if it was to be on an easier difficulty.

 

[Methos]

(though the 'win a game on prince' one still eludes me...)

My intent is to save our CFC TG1 game the turn before victory, so that everyone can play the last turn on their own computer, thereby having a King victory on their personal HoF, so you'll have that one!

Would people have to play on a set difficulty level? Or would higher levels be worth more? As a low-level player I'd find it hard to participate if it was limited to prince or whatever. I'm sure that on the other hand, better players would be bored by the ease if it was to be on an easier difficulty.

This is a good question. I've been considering knocking out the Steam achievements and the easiest way to do so is on the low levels, so its possible we may want to consider ranking achievements by difficulty level played on. As a suggestion:

• Settler = 0.7
• Chieftain = 0.8
• Warlord = 0.9
• Prince = 1
• King = 1.1
• Emperor = 1.2
• Immortal = 1.3
• Deity = 1.4

Therefore an achievement earned on Prince is equal to 1 point. Just a suggestion.

I'd like to help on the admin side too, if you need me or want me. I suggest having several on the admin staff would be wise, but that's up to you.