Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
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Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
KENT HAMMER Thu Jun 13, 2013 9:21 pm
Xbox One Achievements
Today we talked about some of the changes to the new achievements system coming with Xbox One. We just got done hearing from Chad Gibson, Principle Group Program manager for Xbox Live Gaming features and Mike Lavin, Sr. Global Product Marketing manager for Xbox Live on our live broadcast. This morning, we asked Cierra McDonald to explain some of the achievement changes in greater detail for us. Here is what she wrote for you guys
Ahoy! My name is Cierra McDonald. I’m from Chicago, I’m an Illini (I-L-L!!!), and most pertinently, I’m the Program Manager for the Xbox Live Achievements service. My love of gaming started as a wee child, playing Super Mario Bros. at home and joining friends on Altered Beast and Contra at the local arcade. My family’s team sport is Boggle. And apropos of nothing, I once shattered my elbow – or as my surgeon once put it, it’s like Humpty Dumpty fell onto a diamond surface. Fun facts!
Achievements are like a delicious gravy (or a fudge sauce, for the more dessert-minded) on top of a developer’s tasty meal of a game. Playing the game is fun by itself; and achievements add an extra layer of discovery, exploration, and accomplishment that reinforces the natural enjoyment of the gameplay. For Xbox One, my team (an incredible group of smart, hardworking folks) and I have rebuilt the Achievements system to be more powerful and more flexible so that developers and publishers can deliver more interesting, complex, and fulfilling goals and rewards to you. What exactly does that mean?
Let’s start with what you get.
Xbox blazed the trail back in 2005 by introducing Xbox Live Achievements as a metagame whose cumulative score – Gamerscore – spans across games on every Xbox Live platform. Many of today’s gaming systems followed our model and now offer achievements or badges as well. With Xbox One, we are once again breaking the mold and this time, we want consumers to reap more tangible benefits. In addition to Gamerscore, which will remain as a critical part of the Xbox gaming experience (and yes, your Gamerscore from Xbox 360 will carry forward to Xbox One – there’s only ONE Gamerscore (see what I did there?)), consumers can now unlock digital artwork, new maps, unlockable characters, and temporary stat boosts via achievements. And this is not limited to games! Other Xbox One applications such as video and music apps can now use Achievements to bring you awesome sneak peek content, early access, or subscription extensions. Only games will give you Gamerscore.
Cool, you can earn cool stuff with Xbox LIVE Achievements. Let’s talk about how they work.
There are now two types of Achievements: achievements and challenges. An achievement is probably already familiar. There’s a goal or activity you must accomplish and a reward that you receive upon completion. You can unlock an achievement at any time, be it on a game’s launch day or 3 years later. I guess you can say an achievement is like a promise in that sense. A challenge, on the other hand, is more like an opportunity – better grab it while you can! It is also comprised of a goal and a reward; however, challenges are time-bound (as in, real life time). That means you can only unlock during its eligible time window, and if you get close but don’t complete the goal when it ends… *Kanye shrug*
Achievements and challenges are both officially considered Xbox Live Achievements, so they inherit many of the same benefits:
There are also some notable differences between them:
Challenges are time based. As just noted, challenges are only available for a certain period of time. Only your activity during that timeframe will count toward unlocking the challenge. Achievements do not expire, so you can unlock them at your leisure.
Challenges do not give out Gamerscore. We want everyone to have the same shot at increasing their Gamerscore to its highest potential. Since challenges are intentionally temporary (an opportunity) and achievements never expire (a promise), only achievements may offer Gamerscore as a reward.
Challenges may cross titles, but achievements cannot. Achievements cannot be shared across titles whereas challenges are allowed to span multiple titles.
Challenges can be unlocked by the community. Community challenges are typically goals that exceed what a lone player can accomplish in the given period of time. Imagine, for example, a game releases a headshot weekend challenge that requires players to cumulatively headshot 1 million baddies in a 3 day period. And every person who participates and meets the challenge’s goals gets the unlock on his or her achievement history and reaps its reward.
Another really cool thing with the new Achievements system is that it’s cloud-powered. A magical term, I know, but it delivers real value to users. Check it out:
Having cloud-powered achievements makes it easy and consistent to run challenges across all players of a game simultaneously.
It makes it possible for developers to add new achievements and challenges after their game is initially released. Why is that good for you?
1) It means you can get new achievements without always being required to buy new content (read: free!) or download title updates.
2) It allows developers to learn from and respond to user activity and focus on adding stuff that you’ll find fun. For example, let’s say a certain game is known on community forums to have a fun little sub-game of kicking chickens. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the game developers noticed the community enjoying an unintended aspect of the game and creating a challenge around it, with a reward to boot?
3) It empowers developers to involve the community (that means YOU) in the achievement creation process. If they so choose, a developer could run a contest for users to submit and vote on challenge ideas, for example, with the winning idea being released to the public as a legitimate Xbox Live Achievement. Not too shabby!
Let’s bring it all home and talk about what you actually see.
You guys all rock, thanks from all of us here on our dev team. Can’t wait to see you on Live!
Today we talked about some of the changes to the new achievements system coming with Xbox One. We just got done hearing from Chad Gibson, Principle Group Program manager for Xbox Live Gaming features and Mike Lavin, Sr. Global Product Marketing manager for Xbox Live on our live broadcast. This morning, we asked Cierra McDonald to explain some of the achievement changes in greater detail for us. Here is what she wrote for you guys
Ahoy! My name is Cierra McDonald. I’m from Chicago, I’m an Illini (I-L-L!!!), and most pertinently, I’m the Program Manager for the Xbox Live Achievements service. My love of gaming started as a wee child, playing Super Mario Bros. at home and joining friends on Altered Beast and Contra at the local arcade. My family’s team sport is Boggle. And apropos of nothing, I once shattered my elbow – or as my surgeon once put it, it’s like Humpty Dumpty fell onto a diamond surface. Fun facts!
Achievements are like a delicious gravy (or a fudge sauce, for the more dessert-minded) on top of a developer’s tasty meal of a game. Playing the game is fun by itself; and achievements add an extra layer of discovery, exploration, and accomplishment that reinforces the natural enjoyment of the gameplay. For Xbox One, my team (an incredible group of smart, hardworking folks) and I have rebuilt the Achievements system to be more powerful and more flexible so that developers and publishers can deliver more interesting, complex, and fulfilling goals and rewards to you. What exactly does that mean?
Let’s start with what you get.
Xbox blazed the trail back in 2005 by introducing Xbox Live Achievements as a metagame whose cumulative score – Gamerscore – spans across games on every Xbox Live platform. Many of today’s gaming systems followed our model and now offer achievements or badges as well. With Xbox One, we are once again breaking the mold and this time, we want consumers to reap more tangible benefits. In addition to Gamerscore, which will remain as a critical part of the Xbox gaming experience (and yes, your Gamerscore from Xbox 360 will carry forward to Xbox One – there’s only ONE Gamerscore (see what I did there?)), consumers can now unlock digital artwork, new maps, unlockable characters, and temporary stat boosts via achievements. And this is not limited to games! Other Xbox One applications such as video and music apps can now use Achievements to bring you awesome sneak peek content, early access, or subscription extensions. Only games will give you Gamerscore.
Cool, you can earn cool stuff with Xbox LIVE Achievements. Let’s talk about how they work.
There are now two types of Achievements: achievements and challenges. An achievement is probably already familiar. There’s a goal or activity you must accomplish and a reward that you receive upon completion. You can unlock an achievement at any time, be it on a game’s launch day or 3 years later. I guess you can say an achievement is like a promise in that sense. A challenge, on the other hand, is more like an opportunity – better grab it while you can! It is also comprised of a goal and a reward; however, challenges are time-bound (as in, real life time). That means you can only unlock during its eligible time window, and if you get close but don’t complete the goal when it ends… *Kanye shrug*
Achievements and challenges are both officially considered Xbox Live Achievements, so they inherit many of the same benefits:
- You can unlock them and win their rewards;
- Once unlocked, they are saved to your achievement history;
- They each have an icon to visualize the cool thing you did;
- They often are associated with a Game DVR capture to show your friends that you are better than they are
- Developers can release more of them after the game’s initial release (more on that in a bit).
There are also some notable differences between them:
Challenges are time based. As just noted, challenges are only available for a certain period of time. Only your activity during that timeframe will count toward unlocking the challenge. Achievements do not expire, so you can unlock them at your leisure.
Challenges do not give out Gamerscore. We want everyone to have the same shot at increasing their Gamerscore to its highest potential. Since challenges are intentionally temporary (an opportunity) and achievements never expire (a promise), only achievements may offer Gamerscore as a reward.
Challenges may cross titles, but achievements cannot. Achievements cannot be shared across titles whereas challenges are allowed to span multiple titles.
Challenges can be unlocked by the community. Community challenges are typically goals that exceed what a lone player can accomplish in the given period of time. Imagine, for example, a game releases a headshot weekend challenge that requires players to cumulatively headshot 1 million baddies in a 3 day period. And every person who participates and meets the challenge’s goals gets the unlock on his or her achievement history and reaps its reward.
Another really cool thing with the new Achievements system is that it’s cloud-powered. A magical term, I know, but it delivers real value to users. Check it out:
Having cloud-powered achievements makes it easy and consistent to run challenges across all players of a game simultaneously.
It makes it possible for developers to add new achievements and challenges after their game is initially released. Why is that good for you?
1) It means you can get new achievements without always being required to buy new content (read: free!) or download title updates.
2) It allows developers to learn from and respond to user activity and focus on adding stuff that you’ll find fun. For example, let’s say a certain game is known on community forums to have a fun little sub-game of kicking chickens. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the game developers noticed the community enjoying an unintended aspect of the game and creating a challenge around it, with a reward to boot?
3) It empowers developers to involve the community (that means YOU) in the achievement creation process. If they so choose, a developer could run a contest for users to submit and vote on challenge ideas, for example, with the winning idea being released to the public as a legitimate Xbox Live Achievement. Not too shabby!
Let’s bring it all home and talk about what you actually see.
- The Xbox One dashboard experience greatly improves how you discover and view Xbox Live Achievements.
- Ever wondered how far along you were toward completing an achievement, particularly those that involve a lot of collection or linear progress? With Xbox One, games may now expose your latest progression toward unlocking an achievement right on the dashboard, even before you launch the game.
- Quickly catch up on what your friends have been up with the achievement activity feed that keeps you informed about your friends’ latest unlocked achievements.
- Check out video clips of that magical moment when an achievement was unlocked.
- Easily discover upcoming challenges for a game at any time.
- Your achievement history has been transformed into a more beautiful gallery of achievement icons that properly show off your hard-earned victories.
You guys all rock, thanks from all of us here on our dev team. Can’t wait to see you on Live!
Last edited by KENT HAMMER on Thu Jun 13, 2013 11:11 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Made it easier to read for bunny)
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Re: Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
RabidHellBunny Thu Jun 13, 2013 10:06 pm
Wow... way too much reading while in a diazepam daze... is this good news? I'll read it when I'm... sober?? Clean?? I don't even know what term to use.
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Re: Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
Colne Crusader Thu Jun 13, 2013 10:24 pm
Wow!
After reading that gray text, the god-like whiteness of Bunny's reply text nearly blinded me!!
Nice read there. That all sounds pretty good. I thought for a minute that the time limited challenges were going to include gamerscore. Thank God they don't! There would have been uproar.
Just as i'm trying to lose interest in cheevs, they go and make them more interesting!! Damn you MS! Lol. Thank God i'm not getting one for a year or two.
After reading that gray text, the god-like whiteness of Bunny's reply text nearly blinded me!! Nice read there. That all sounds pretty good. I thought for a minute that the time limited challenges were going to include gamerscore. Thank God they don't! There would have been uproar.
Just as i'm trying to lose interest in cheevs, they go and make them more interesting!! Damn you MS! Lol. Thank God i'm not getting one for a year or two.
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Re: Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
Waggly Bean Thu Jun 13, 2013 10:31 pm
This is interesting indeed.
The fact that developers can just add things though suggests an ever-changing achievement list - going to be tough going for completionists surely?
The one thing that does sound good is the challenges - if done right that is. I can see developers making challenges to make people buy on day 1 ie "you only get this challenge achievement if you kill 100 people within the first 48 hours of the games release". That would obviously be rubbish for anyone that doesn't fancy plunking down £45 for the latest release.
However I got to thinking about it and if developers used the challenges for specific recurring events, it could really work well.
This for example is exactly what the online events on ResidentEvil.net do, but obviously without having to sign up to anything additional like with Resi, where you have to have an account on their website, link your game code to it etc. All in all, I'd be well up for that and welcome the idea. I just expect the first wave of games to have stupid challenge achievements until the devs get to grips with making good lists...
The fact that developers can just add things though suggests an ever-changing achievement list - going to be tough going for completionists surely?
The one thing that does sound good is the challenges - if done right that is. I can see developers making challenges to make people buy on day 1 ie "you only get this challenge achievement if you kill 100 people within the first 48 hours of the games release". That would obviously be rubbish for anyone that doesn't fancy plunking down £45 for the latest release.
However I got to thinking about it and if developers used the challenges for specific recurring events, it could really work well.
Waffle wrote:Imagine, for example, a game releases a headshot weekend challenge that requires players to cumulatively headshot 1 million baddies in a 3 day period. And every person who participates and meets the challenge’s goals gets the unlock on his or her achievement history and reaps its reward.
This for example is exactly what the online events on ResidentEvil.net do, but obviously without having to sign up to anything additional like with Resi, where you have to have an account on their website, link your game code to it etc. All in all, I'd be well up for that and welcome the idea. I just expect the first wave of games to have stupid challenge achievements until the devs get to grips with making good lists...
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Re: Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
GrahamOfTheDead Thu Jun 13, 2013 10:44 pm
I've kind of weaned myself off achievements/gamerscore now (60+ hours 100 percenting Lego City sure helped!). It's cool that the timed/one-off stuff doesn't include gamerscore though, although stuff like the MS Store achievement counting as an Arcade completion in some circles did piss me off at first. I got over it though.
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Re: Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
Guest Fri Jun 14, 2013 7:52 am
completionists are going to be unhappy but having been one for 3 years we are unhappy anyway lol
Losing my 360 really put a spanner in my xbox gaming so I am now less bothered about cheevs but they still are important to me
Its odd as they add to some games and detract from others
As GOTD pointed out in Lego City there are none as its a wiiankuoff game and you don't miss them......up to a point. I have finished all the missions and I found myself not caring about getting all the blocks now. If there were achs for getting more completed then I would probably continue on with it. I have played it for 40+ hours so I got a good time but the lack of achs on it means I wont go to 75 hours like I have on lots of 360 games
Other titles you end up playing far too long because you want to max it ach wise
I am a little vexed they are changing the concept of achs and Gamerscore as I think the meddling will just make it more messy. I would have just made it simpler and cut out online achs and gone back to 1000 and 200 for full and xbla respectively with 250 max being available on dlc.
Far too many devs have bunged on extra content in stages and got away with it by having continual extra achs. I would also limit each game to 10 achs with dlc an extra 5
Achs started out as a great idea but the have been abused by money grabbing publishers and an unlevel playing field
What initially attracted me to playing long hours of 360 over other consoles is now turning into something that is having the opposite effect.
Losing my 360 really put a spanner in my xbox gaming so I am now less bothered about cheevs but they still are important to me
Its odd as they add to some games and detract from others
As GOTD pointed out in Lego City there are none as its a wiiankuoff game and you don't miss them......up to a point. I have finished all the missions and I found myself not caring about getting all the blocks now. If there were achs for getting more completed then I would probably continue on with it. I have played it for 40+ hours so I got a good time but the lack of achs on it means I wont go to 75 hours like I have on lots of 360 games
Other titles you end up playing far too long because you want to max it ach wise
I am a little vexed they are changing the concept of achs and Gamerscore as I think the meddling will just make it more messy. I would have just made it simpler and cut out online achs and gone back to 1000 and 200 for full and xbla respectively with 250 max being available on dlc.
Far too many devs have bunged on extra content in stages and got away with it by having continual extra achs. I would also limit each game to 10 achs with dlc an extra 5
Achs started out as a great idea but the have been abused by money grabbing publishers and an unlevel playing field
What initially attracted me to playing long hours of 360 over other consoles is now turning into something that is having the opposite effect.
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Re: Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
RabidHellBunny Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:06 am
Thanks for that Kent... I've read it now. Not sure I have anything constructive to add to the conversation though... achievements yay! Challenges yay!
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Re: Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
KENT HAMMER Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:16 am
I think that we will see an increase in points in each genre for XBONE.
I am going for 1000 for XBLA and 2000 for retail.
This would be the genius and simple way to make 360 buy XBONE.
Surely they will have thought of this right?
Would be the easiest way for me to keep my score higher than poor tenlo;)
I am going for 1000 for XBLA and 2000 for retail.
This would be the genius and simple way to make 360 buy XBONE.
Surely they will have thought of this right?
Would be the easiest way for me to keep my score higher than poor tenlo;)
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Re: Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
Gabhlan Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:38 am
I don't see it being a problem for completionists as the game will still have a fixed gamerscore for you to use to consider it completed all the extra stuff is not gamerscored and so doesn't count.
It'll still be open to the same horrible play for ages, kill everything that ever existed or will exist and reach rank impossible achievements you get now though. It's just a case of rising above those ones. I like completing games but after dabbling in activities like killing 100,000 enemies in Gears-2 I only do achievements that enhance a game rather than laboursome tasks like ranking up in a horrible multiplayer game just for a few virtual G's when I could be having fun playing something else.
I'd say Riled will like the "Your achievement history has been transformed into a more beautiful gallery of achievement icons that properly show off your hard-earned victories." statement. I like looking at all the cool little icons that most game makers take the time to design when they put in the achievement list too.
It'll still be open to the same horrible play for ages, kill everything that ever existed or will exist and reach rank impossible achievements you get now though. It's just a case of rising above those ones. I like completing games but after dabbling in activities like killing 100,000 enemies in Gears-2 I only do achievements that enhance a game rather than laboursome tasks like ranking up in a horrible multiplayer game just for a few virtual G's when I could be having fun playing something else.
I'd say Riled will like the "Your achievement history has been transformed into a more beautiful gallery of achievement icons that properly show off your hard-earned victories." statement. I like looking at all the cool little icons that most game makers take the time to design when they put in the achievement list too.
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Re: Xbox One Achievements explained by Major Nelson
kinmad4it Fri Jun 14, 2013 12:53 pm
Achievements do not expire, so you can unlock them at your leisure.
Really?!! Do tell me then, how do I get all those online achievements on those EA Sports games that have their servers turned off as soon as the next update, sorry, new game, is released?
So achievements don't expire? I call bullshit!!!
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