Achievement Design Musings

What kinds of achievements are there? Why wouldn't you want these? What makes a good achievement, and what makes a bad one? To try to answer these, I thought about two RPGs I've played quite a bit of and how they handle achievements. Most of the methods outlined translated to other genres as well!

Final Fantasy 9 is your typical JRPG: save the world, there's a princess, you get an airship, elemental items... and 6 months ago it got a Steam release with 85 achievements.
Undertale is a game about player choice- and having achievements for certain things would spell out those choices and detract from the main message of the game.

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   |Spoiler warning for those two games, not that anyone probably cares at this point.|
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This would ESPECIALLY hold true if Undertale were to have a standard set of achievements- one for each boss, ending, farm gold, farm kills, beat the game at level 1... you see how this would completely destroy the message. But could Undertale fit achievements in without breaking the theme? To find out, let's break down what kinds of achievements exist, give an example or two, and discuss what purpose they serve.

Achievements seem to break down into 8 categories- with some overlap between them. You have story, sidequest and completion achievements for the main progression of the game. Completion doesn't necessarily mean 100% completion- I've seen achievements for getting to a certain percentage, or collecting all of a certain type of item. These have a decent amount of overlap but are ultimately distinct enough. Minigame achievements run tangential to this, depending on if those games are part of the main game or not. Then you have grindy and anti-achievements: which require amassing a certain value in a statistic (often kills) and playing poorly, respectively. Arbitrary achievements run tangential to anti ones sometimes (Portal 2 has a couple for falling for obvious traps) and usually highlight some silly side scene that otherwise wouldn't be observed by most players. Lastly, you have the hardcore achievements: your speedruns, no damage runs, low level runs and so on. So what makes these good, what makes these bad, and how would they fit into a hypothetical achievement set for Undertale? On to the examples! Final Fantasy 9 on Steam has an example for each of these, so I'll use that at first.

Story achievements
	Anything that a player just playing the game will obtain by the end. These generally spoil plot events unless they're phrased vaguely and should be used carefully: though everyone loves freebies!
	All's Well That Ends Well is awarded for beating the game. No spoilers here.
	A Round of Applause is awarded in the first 30 minutes of the game, and again, the description is vague enough to not reveal anything about the scenario or placement.
	Getting Emotional requires an activation of Trance. This sounds like it falls under sidequest, but nope! There are 3 forced Trances in the game, so this is a story achievement in disguise! Very well placed in that regard.
	The worst examples from FF9 on a spoiler front are the four guardians in the final dungeon, as each get an achievement. Any FF fan knows who these four fiends are and can guess at their location in the game. Fortunately, these aren't too plot relevant. Imagine if there was an achievement for surviving the destruction of Cleyra, or any other surprising plot development- it could potentially ruin parts of the game for people.

Sidequest achievements
Completion achievements
Minigame achievements
	So many of all of these, virtually all minigames/sidequests have some measure of completion and an associated achievement- this is pretty neat, actually. Most ultimate weapons are also included under collection. Jump Rope and Athlete Queen (rhythm and mashing) are the most annoying of the bunch.

Grindy achievements
	So many grindy ones... worst offenders are grind to 99 and kill 10,000 enemies.

Anti-achievements
	Still I Rise: FF9 really doesn't have these, but needing to party wipe and trigger the random Phoenix summon is as close as it gets. This probably won't happen under normal circumstances, as Eiko isn't a very strong party member and the odds are Phoenix Pinion count out of 256. The Desert Palace would have to be the location this would happen, and most players probably sold their pinions after realizing that they function as Phoenix Downs with a 1k sell cost.
	A Clean Bill of Health is awarded for having gotten every single status in the game onto one character, at some point. That means all the bad stuff like Gradual Petrify, Virus, Venom, Death, and all the good stuff, like Might, Float and Auto-Life.
	For another party wipe achievement, A-Hunting We Will Go requires Vivi to win the Festival of the Hunt. This is accomplished by waiting around 8 minutes for the Zaghnol to spawn, fighting it, waiting for Freya to show up and then losing. As in, dying. You have to wipe for Vivi to win, otherwise Freya takes it.

Arbitrary achievements
	One Nag Too Many, awarded for summoning and dismissing Moguo on the world map 15 times in a row.
	What does this accomplish? Well, it's an easter egg that players otherwise might not have known about. Other than that- it's a silly little thing that players have to look forward to, and that's pretty cool.
	Cracking the Code is awarded for finding the secret of the Eidolon Wall.
	This has the effect of revealing that there is a secret here, which is both a blessing and curse. After all, it's a secret, and this makes its knowledge common. Players now know to look for it, but it does remove some of the luster. The in-game reward is a nice little backstory scene.
	Your Lucky Day requires a very good color fortune result. I didn't know these existed before reading the achievement list, and I've played through FF9 at least a dozen times by now. It's a little grindy but not too bad.
	The One Ring is one that could easily fall under grindy, as it requires mining a copy of Madain's Ring. There is ONE opportunity in the entire game to do this, and the mining game is pure luck with a very slow pace. This is the rarest result as well and could take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to get. It does get people who care looking at the mining game, and thus all minigames, looking for rewards, so it's not all bad.

Hardcore achievements
	Movie Critic. Watch 79 Active Time Events. This is one of those innocuous sounding ones that turns nasty when you realize what it takes- there's 83 in the entire game. Two are mutually exclusive. Three are tutorials and don't count. That leaves 79 maximum per file: and several of these require specific WALKING PATHS through areas, one requires you to be broke at a certain event, and one requires failing a puzzle in all possible ways. Wow. As you can see, hardcore can mean completion, too. The effect? I guess it's to get people looking at all the side scenes, which most people would do anyway.
	The Ultimate Sword is another simple sounding achievement: obtain Excalibur II. How do you do this? Well, beat Lich (the fourth to last boss in the game, near the end of the final dungeon) in less than 12 hours, game time. A really good speedrun gets here around 7:45 on the PC version, so there really isn't much room for error here for the casual player. Even for the hardcore players this is targeted at, coming up with a route that can blast through the game in less than 12 hours is a tall order. Now, this does reveal the existence but not the method, and I think the description would be stronger if it did reveal the method, but this has a sense of mystery that I think would appeal to most... until they find out what it takes.


Undertale's Hypothetical set:
	Story: (theming here is soundtrack names)
		"Your Best Friend": Make a new best friend!
			Awarded on completing the Flowey 'battle' near the beginning of the game.
		"Dummy": placeholder
			Awarded for defeating the Mad/Glad Dummy. It fits with the humor of the game, and not triggering on the tutorial fight would leave the player guessing.
		"Undertale": It's a tale, understand?
			Awarded for playing through the "Undertale" segment of the game. Floweytale does not apply! You could argue this is a bad idea to include, but it pokes that a first-time Genocide run is definitely missing a lot of content and spaces out 4 achievements throughout the game fairly close to equally.
		"An Ending": The journey draws to a close?
			Awarded for reaching any ending. Players want to do this anyway!
	BAD IDEAS:
		Defeat Toriel, Papyrus, Undyne, Mettaton EX, Asgore
			After Toriel or Papyrus the formula is clear, but then Alphys shows up and isn't fought. Revealing the main boss list removes the surprise of battling Toriel, or Mettaton's transformation. Spare/Kill is worse as it herds the player towards playing specific ways. Napstablook, Dog Squad, or Royal Guards would be fine due to their lower impact but this reveals their lower impact. Vague descriptions help with the spoilers but not with the herding problem.
		Kill a monster/spare a monster
			Ditto. Don't force either side of a moral choice the player may not even know exists.
	REALLY BAD IDEAS:
		Defeat Undyne the Undying, Mettaton NEO, Sans, Omega Flowey, Asriel. Discover the True Lab.
			True Pacifist and Genocide absolutely DO NOT want achievements, for herding and spoiler reasons. Omega Flowey is a shocker that loses almost all of its impact if you know it's coming.

	Sidequest:
		"Spider Dance": They dance with glee!
			Awarded for buying anything at the spider bakesale.
		"Here We Are": But where is here?
			Awarded for doing any hangout sequence. Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, or either Sans restaurant trip count.
		"Memory": How annoying.
			Awarded for completing the piano puzzle and having the artifact absorbed.
		"Pathetic House": Or is it?
			Awarded for accessing Mettaton's house.
		"Finale": or is it?
			Awarded for accessing Sans' lab. This is one of the more obscure secrets, and the lack of caps in the description is all the allusion it should take to get people looking in the right direction.. not that it makes it easier to find. Does force pacifist play, but that's not a real issue.
	BAD IDEAS:
		Undyne hangout, Alphys hangout
			See above REALLY BAD IDEAS reasoning. Sidequests are fine I think- most of these are little things players would be looking for anyway, and it's not a problem to reveal these minor things.

	Completion:
		"An Ending" covers the good here. The bad? Any achievements for SPECIFIC endings or seeing the true credits.

	Minigame:
		"Snowy": This, however, is not made of snow.
			Awarded for playing a round of ball game.
		"Thundersnail": You can't give encouragement without courage.
			Play a round of Thundersnail.

	Grindy:
		"Pomp and Circumstance": Graduation Day, Hooray!
			Send Temmie to college. Takes 1,000G which a full sparing casual run should hit.
	BAD IDEAS:
		Undertale wants maybe one of these... amassing a certain amount of G (likely 9999) would be a bad call. Buy the Temmie Armor at full price or Spider Bake Sale 2 would be poor choices also for the same reason. This type is generally bad anyway.

	Anti:
		"Determination": ...
			Awarded for dying at any other point in the game.
		"Burn in Despair": HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
			Awarded for dying to Omega Flowey.

	Arbitrary:
		"Fallen Down": Oh no!
			Awarded for tipping over the bowl of Monster Candy.
		"Stronger Monsters": Wait, that doesn't seem right!
			Awarded for entering any encounter in Hard Mode.
		"Reunited": Have a chat with an old friend.
			Awarded for talking to Asriel at the beginning of the game, during the TPE epilogue, OR for talking to Chara at the end of a second Genocide run. Most people would probably see one of these endings but miss the chat, and this is vague enough that there's no spoilers to be found here. Does it go against the herding option? Yes, but I don't know anyone who hasn't gone for TPE.
		"Wrong Enemy?": Encounter the incorrect encounter.
			Awarded for encountering Glyde or So Sorry. Again, this has two options to allow multiple avenues of discovery.
		"Oh, Dungeon!": Made it with time to spare!
			Awarded for completing the second colored tile puzzle. Spoiler? Not really- the song name reveals there's a dungeon of some sort (Mt. Ebott) and there's a time limit somewhere. By the time a time limit is invoked with Mettaton and the word 'dungeon' is dropped, the Alphys rescue event sequence has already been established.
		"Bring It In, Guys!": You heard the.. narrator?
			Awarded for inputting any character name (except AAAAAA) with a special message.
	BAD IDEAS:
		Anything that requires a specific dialogue option or reveals something that otherwise wouldn't be known about. Kindergarden Teacher, specific enemy paths (can't blame a BARK for tryin' comes to mind) or a specific CORE path. CORE in particular I don't think should be alluded to as a location. Eating the Butterscotch Pie in front of Asgore is also more of a connection than you even want to allude to- let the player figure that out on their own.

	Hardcore:
		"You Idiot": You were too DUMB to even SAVE ONCE.
			Awarded for completing the game without SAVEing once.
		"Heartache": And no easy way to cure it.
			Awarded for completing the game without items.
		"Once Upon a Time": End at the beginning.
			Awarded for completing the game with initial equipment.
		"The Choice": The ultimate choice is in your hands.
			Awarded for completing the game without saves, items, or changing equipment.
	BAD IDEAS:
		Anything that requires sticking to Genocide. No damage runs of bosses aren't a bad idea in theory, but that runs into the 'don't spoil the bosses' problem outlined earlier. Dodge all the TPE credits is solid in theory as well, but some secrets are better off truly secret.

Overall though, I can see why Toby elected not to include achievements. It really does point towards playing the game your own way, making it a more personal experience, and I can respect that. It also allows this interesting thought exercise of achievement design on an existing product! So what's the summary?

1: Don't make the player grind to hell and back for achievements. That's bad.
2: Don't make the player do something they don't want to do, morally. That's worse, but rare.
2.5: Don't make the player do something that goes against the character or the game. Dying in a specific spot is okay if it's played for laughts.
3: Freebies are cool, but if everything is a freebie then achievements don't mean much.
4: There is no such thing as too hard to obtain in single player.
5: Don't spoil the game with achievements.

Achievement design can add to the experience as well- Anodyne did this excellently, with 3 storyline achievements (beginning, halfway and end), 2 further completion ones (100% and 100% postgame) and a 'hardcore' 100% speedrun achievement that's very easy to obtain for a player who went all the way for completion. Some secrets aren't even alluded to, leaving some things to still be discovered even after Steam says 100% completion.