With most games now a days there are Achievements. For getting 'X' Amount of kills, captures, skulls, etc. Even exploration of a map.

My question to the community is this::

"Would/Should Eternal Crusade have Achievements or not? Why?"

I'm going with Maybe. Because I don't care either way. It could be a good challenge to achieve the goal, something to do if you're bored and want too experiment.

BUT...I think the Achievements should have some kind of reward. Maybe a new piece of armor, armor trophy, weapon decal, etc. Something to reward your efforts at least.

With the Xbox Achievements, I never understood what the achievement points signified or meant. I still don't. I thought it was like a currency I could use to buy something. If Eternal Crusade DOES that, offer in game currency for a specific achievement, then they could allow all player types (subs and F2P) unique items. Just something too help them feel they accomplished something.

I wouldn't mind them as long as they don't have an impact on gameplay (as in don't encourage you to farm kills instead of working towards objectives for example).

Any achievement award should be mostly cosmetic. I'd love to see them though.

Alternate weapon/armour skins would be nice, just nothing that will affect gameplay in anyway. So purely cosmetic.

Eh. Another fad that is infecting every damn game. So long as they don't tie much, if anything to them, sure, knock yourself out, I guess? It's when they start gating stuff behind pointless junk that it gets really trite and annoying...

Achievements is good when they represent some great unique things. not like tons of nonsense like 1-10-100-1000 kills on every weapon.

for example medals for participation in great battle that had significant role and only 5% of defenders was alive in the end of the battle but the enemy was defeated

As few above I don't mind them and even could eagerly accept achievements system in case:

1. it will have some at least semi-original and hard to complete tasks, rather bored 'kill scores' type
2. it will provide access to customization baubles and fandangles

Having achievements in a game has, historically proven not to be a negative "carrot on a stick" game mechanic, however, with that said, there are examples of how to do it right and now to not do it right. Having unrealistic achievements which push the player to be better than other players such as "Achievement for being best player or top player on the world leaderboard in PvP" for example are bad ways of executing achievements, example... Shogun 2 and especially so if said achievement was tied into a "collect all these achievements for PvP to get this achievement achievement!" which isn't in itself bad, but is if it included such unrealistic achievements.

In the early days, naming Xbox Live Achievements, most were done in a bad way which pressured players to play better than their follow gamers, however in later games, namely most MMOs today such as World of Warcraft as well as Steam Achievements, they give examples of achievements done right. Rewarding players for having fun and progression on a passive scale, at most achievements should only give rewards in the way of achievement points, cosmetic rewards and titles for their characters. Achievements become representative of time played and reward a player for their dedication to a game, but at the same time don't represent something that impacts onto the game to the extent that you feel "you must have them to be of any worth".

With all that said, achievements should be something personal and not something public other than the rewards you receive such as cosmetic items and titles, which in themselves should always be optional to display. Showing Achievement points publicly is fine, but forcing a player to have their entire game history visible to the public, in the case of say World of Warcraft is a bad thing; Yes on the website you can hide your character but you can't in game.

The reason this is a problem is that having your achievements listed on display for the world to see gives "elitists" a reason to judge a player's skill by their achievements. You could be an awesome PvPer, but denied entry to a guild or a team simply because they don't like your Achievement Record, it leaves room for discrimination and despite the best intentions of developers to lay out the ground work for a positive and friendly community, every community has the risk of elitists propagating the community and the only way to combat it is to give them no method to judge others except how they see them play. There are two methods to combat this, 1) make it so if you do have publicly view-able player profiles which include achievements, give players the option to make it private, even elitists can't deny players the right to privatize their profile or limit the visible achievement points to the points and not the achievements which secured those points and when doing so you can't judge them for it. 2) Have achievements entirely personal and not visible at all to the public.

Personally I like option 1, because some people actually enjoy others showing interest in their achievements. But at the same time some people may not have very many achievements but be good players and don't want to be isolated simply because they are not "hardcore" and play the game like they have no life.

All I can say is, achievements are when done correctly harmless and fun as well as respent goals for players to seek of a permanent nature which surpasses loot, gear and other temporary things in a MMO. They sort of log the history of your characters and everyone gets attached to their favorite character, achievements help you remember awesome times you've spent in the game and with your character.

agreed