Gilasil wrote:
Here's my problem with this.
Ok so suppose there's an achievement for killing the Great Foozle of Antonica. I kill it and get the achievement. I might even get a reward if some people on this thread have their way.
How is that different from a quest?
Even crafting 10,000 items could be be a quest if it's on a single character.
If the achievement system just becomes another quest system, why not just put those into quests? If it's to be kept seperate from quests then achievements must be qualitatively different. It looks to me like they were originally intended to be different but the pressure appears to be to making them just more quests. At least those which could be applied to a single character. Maybe long and involved quests, but quests.
I have no problem with quests. I like quests. I spend most of my play time working on quests. But an achievement system should be fundamentally different.
The achievement system is quite different from the quest system. Quests have tons of flexibility and as such put a bigger strain on the system in general. This is why we have a limit to your active quests that can "listen" for updates.
The achievement system was designed from the ground up to be much more lightweight. We can literally have hundreds if not thousands of achievements listening for updates at any given time. Because of this performance requirement, the system isn't as flexible as the quest system.
Also, achievements are meant to measure things that you already do. Almost all achievements are for things you would go out and do anyway, or might occur during normal gameplay. Quests specifically send you in a different direction with the purpose of introducing content, stories, lore and rewards.
Quests also have multiple branches and stages that can sometimes be completed in random order or require you to do them in a specific order. Achievements are much simpler in that they measure 1 type of action and don't force them to be done in any order.
LINK
(Rothgar) Re:Re:EverQuest II Achievement System
