GOG Galaxy and the wing commander series

I never understood why some gamers hate achievements gog said you can turn them off altogether and its not like you have to do any of them if you dont want to, I guess just something to complain about, but something tells me if they were implemented there would be a fair number of yall hunting all of them down
I think the reflex against such things comes from nostalgy about one's own fantasy when playing... If you play a game a lot, you not only play the game, you also start to play "with" the game. You give yourself your own challenges so to speak. A good game provides a playground for your own fantasy. It's never possible to do everything remotely possible and a system that tells you you've done "everything" has to be flawed and spoils the experience in my opinion.

Hell, in Silent Hunter 1 (submarine sim) I once managed to shoot down a fighter plane with the onboard cannon. Another time, I managed to sink a destroyer by firing a torpedo with only manual, through sonar estimated solution from more than 100 yards depth dived. (If you don't know SH1, let's just say these are quite unlikely but theoretically possible things to do) If there were an actual "achievement" for these things, it would have been less fun for me - Because without, I could feel like I did something original, and that's more rewarding than a "reward."
 
I think the reflex against such things comes from nostalgy about one's own fantasy when playing... If you play a game a lot, you not only play the game, you also start to play "with" the game. You give yourself your own challenges so to speak. A good game provides a playground for your own fantasy. It's never possible to do everything remotely possible and a system that tells you you've done "everything" has to be flawed and spoils the experience in my opinion.

Hell, in Silent Hunter 1 (submarine sim) I once managed to shoot down a fighter plane with the onboard cannon. Another time, I managed to sink a destroyer by firing a torpedo with only manual, through sonar estimated solution from more than 100 yards depth dived. (If you don't know SH1, let's just say these are quite unlikely but theoretically possible things to do) If there were an actual "achievement" for these things, it would have been less fun for me - Because without, I could feel like I did something original, and that's more rewarding than a "reward."
I see where you coming from but let me ask you this, I never have played that game but lets say that the game had achievements and you got an achievement for that sonar estimated solution and you were one of the few people who ever got it, would it not be nice to brag a little to your gamer friends about it??? the only problem I see is if a game is made easier to make more people get said achievement than thats a problem. but retro adding achievements to wing commander will do nothing but enhance the experience to me. I would love an achievement in special operations where you get one cap ship to destroy another cap ship, bc that shows ya flying skills
 
and just bc you 100 percent a game and get all the achievements, that does not mean you cant go back into the game and still make your own fun, I 100 percent bioshock infinite and I still play that, bc I enjoy the story and I make my own challenges that the devs did not think of.
 
I think Quacker2k8 means that he actually accomplished something nigh-impossible in the game, or something that was not intended but possible, or even a bug, and that was fun for him. If there was an achievement for this, the expierence is not unique, and less fun(to me).

Making achievements for flukes like that is as pointless as logging onto a game with a few friends and take turns standing still and shooting eachother to get a 100headshots-achievement.
 
I think Quacker2k8 means that he actually accomplished something nigh-impossible in the game, or something that was not intended but possible, or even a bug, and that was fun for him. If there was an achievement for this, the expierence is not unique, and less fun(to me).

Making achievements for flukes like that is as pointless as logging onto a game with a few friends and take turns standing still and shooting eachother to get a 100headshots-achievement.
doesnt sound like a bug to me just a really hard thing to do but I dont know never played the game.

as far as multi player achievements I agree not a huge fan of those bc yes we all have experienced players who are doing stupid stuff just to get a 100 head shots,
 
Capship Achievement: Okay, looks like the max capship kills (including Dorkirs) is 17 (8 Dorkir, 5 Ralari, 3 Fralthi, 1 Base with the path E > M/G > G/C > B > D > K > R > V) with 15 being more damaging capship-wise (4 Dorkir, 5 Ralari, 5 Fralthi, 1 Base with the path E > M/G > G/C > B > PH > HS > R > V).
 
doesnt sound like a bug to me just a really hard thing to do but I dont know never played the game.

as far as multi player achievements I agree not a huge fan of those bc yes we all have experienced players who are doing stupid stuff just to get a 100 head shots,

Achievements in general are made in a way that everybody can reach them. Wing commander 2 and 3 have flukes, such as the bad guys shooting eachother or even flying into eachother. If this happens, you are just damn lucky.

The weirdest achievement I ever made on the xbox was in Dogfight:1942, when I played "chicken" with an enemy ace, and managed to kill him with a rocket(You are not supposed to shoot enemy fighters with rockets in a WW2 sim). However, anyone could replicate that scenerio and get the achievement, but they'd never have as much fun as me when it happened by accident.
 
Yeah my examples meant things like this one. Something that in real-world physics certainly would be possible, but highly unlikely. As the player, one may wonder if the game is programmed in way to make such a bingo-hit possible at all or if it would just dismiss it. Now if there's an actual "achievement" for this kind of stuff, the players knows from the beginning that he has a chance to do that, which in my opinion steals a lot of the fun: The "wow I pioneered something THEY probably didn't even intend" -moment turns into "ok they wanted me to do a number of things, strike this one from the list."

EDIT: That side of it being clarified, I totally understand Jdawg's argument about things like the losing-paths in WC games: If the achievement system works more like a hint-device saying "look, there are a lot of completely original full-scale story-missions you haven't played yet, here's your chance to check them out!" then by all means yes.
 
The weirdest achievement I ever made on the xbox was in Dogfight:1942, when I played "chicken" with an enemy ace, and managed to kill him with a rocket(You are not supposed to shoot enemy fighters with rockets in a WW2 sim). However, anyone could replicate that scenerio and get the achievement, but they'd never have as much fun as me when it happened by accident.
Hey, what? You played Dogfight 1942? Seriously, it's always so weird to hear someone offhandedly refer to a game that you made - particularly, when it's not a game you're hugely proud of (we had to cut way too many corners in production). Anyway, it's offtopic here, but the game was definitely designed to facilitate shooting enemy planes with rockets. A lot of tweaking went into ensuring that rockets could be used effectively, and the game actually encourages you through dialogues to try shooting rockets at bombers. We assumed that once players tried rocket-killing bombers, they'd inevitably join the dots and attempt to rocket-kill fighters, too.
 
I bought the game when it appeared on Xboxlive, about on releaseday.

The kill I made then was the enemy ace in a ME262, single-shot. I recall the game came up with a cutscene afterwards, giving you the idea that you were up for the fight of your life, but he was already dead, and so there i was "ROTFLMAO" when I also got an achievement. And yes it makes sense to shoot at a tank or bomber with a "dumbfire missile", but the idea of shooting a relatively small jet does not make sense to me, since it would be just dumb luck.

And as for the game itself, the extra missions came to soon(And where too expensive when you compared them to the game). And I was not happy with the lack of multiplayer(splitscreen only, no online capabilities, and this was never fixed). The atmosphere and gameplay where actually very good, and on par with Blazing Angels and Heroes over Europe... And ofcourse the Voice acting was on par with SWON, Squealing piglets :rolleyes:.

There are only very few games that "fit" in the profile of "combat simulator" today, but me and most of my close friends would still like to see more games like that, same goes for space-sims. Star Citizen should be the game that finds that atmosphere, but we won't know that untill it's done.

But all in all, I'd buy a Dogfight 1943 if it came out.
 
The kill I made then was the enemy ace in a ME262, single-shot. I recall the game came up with a cutscene afterwards, giving you the idea that you were up for the fight of your life, but he was already dead, and so there i was "ROTFLMAO" when I also got an achievement. And yes it makes sense to shoot at a tank or bomber with a "dumbfire missile", but the idea of shooting a relatively small jet does not make sense to me, since it would be just dumb luck.
Well... against a jet, it would certainly be extremely challenging, and that cutscene clearly shows we weren't anticipating such an outcome ;). Just for the record, though, WWII aircraft did on some occasions shoot down fighters with rockets. The Soviets in particular used rockets a lot, and had some impressive early successes (the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 against the Japanese - sixteen fighters and three bombers shot down with RS-82 rockets). I strongly suspect, however, that if we were to look at accuracy stats against aircraft, we'd find an initially dismal fire-to-hit ratio dropping dramatically over the course of the war as aircraft got faster and faster.

And as for the game itself, the extra missions came to soon(And where too expensive when you compared them to the game). And I was not happy with the lack of multiplayer(splitscreen only, no online capabilities, and this was never fixed). The atmosphere and gameplay where actually very good, and on par with Blazing Angels and Heroes over Europe... And ofcourse the Voice acting was on par with SWON, Squealing piglets :rolleyes:.
Ah. The extra missions. A highly unfortunate thing. Originally, the game was going to be a DVD release. For various reasons, this turned out to be impractical, and the game had to be adapted to an Xbox Live Arcade release. This meant, firstly, that the game was modified in various small ways to feel more arcade - some positive changes (better explosions are always good), some not so positive (we went from a clean, almost invisible HUD to... what you see). The biggest change, though, was having to fit within 2 GB. And there goes half the game - we simply cut the Russian and African campaigns out (the price of the game was also lower than initially planned, but yes, the extra missions were overpriced). Feel my pain, please - we originally had four campaigns that interweaved missions from the four theatres in chronological order. Each of the four theatres has a distinct feel to it, so when half the missions and two whole theatres disappeared from the initial release, I wasn't surprised to see reviewers complaining about a lack of variety. That, I'm sure, also tells you why the extra missions were released so quickly.

I think that some Wing Commander influence can be detected in the voiceovers, BTW. Certainly, that's what we were going for. In the end, this proved to be something of a disaster, if reviews are to be believed. I still think the dialogues we had struck a really good balance - sometimes, extremely serious, and at other times, very jokesy (and for once, the badness of the jokes was intentional rather than accidental :)). It's just what you'd expect from a bunch of twenty-something-year-olds trying to stay sane while watching their friends drop dead all around - but it's clear the reviewers and probably most of the audience didn't get the idea. I guess the big problem was that we were squeezing into the combat missions all the dialogues that, in WC, would be divided between in-flight and the rec room. Had we had the resources to have on-the-ground conversations and shove the jokes in there rather than in the air, everything would have made a lot more sense. That was never really an option, however.

There are only very few games that "fit" in the profile of "combat simulator" today, but me and most of my close friends would still like to see more games like that, same goes for space-sims. Star Citizen should be the game that finds that atmosphere, but we won't know that untill it's done. But all in all, I'd buy a Dogfight 1943 if it came out.
Well, I'm fairly sure there will never be a Dogfight 1943, because the entire team was fired immediately after release (I was fired even before release - who needs creative directors for bugfixing, right? :)), the company being convinced that the project would be a dismal failure financially. But, if you want to try something similar, I would recommend the Air Conflicts series. They're somewhat more "budget" than Dogfight 1942 was, so you shouldn't expect too much in terms of production values (especially voiceovers, they can be downright horrid), but I've certainly found them enjoyable (disclosure: I did consult a tiny little bit on AC: Pacific Carriers, and then a lot more on AC: Vietnam. The latter is probably the weakest game in the series, but... uh, don't blame me :p. I was only brought in when they were almost done, so most of my feedback and design changes were implemented into the post-release PC patch and the subsequent PS4 "remastered" version, while the Xbox and PS3 editions are essentially unchanged).
 
I'm surprised there wasn't more discussion here about the Wing Commander game that actually had Xbox Achievements, Arena :). Given the limited number of achievements that were originally possible for Arcade games, I think this is a pretty fun and effective assortment. You've got a pretty good mix. Commando/Ace/Dogfight/etc award multiplayer skill, Hot Dog motivates you to play a side-game that some might not explore, Paladin and Gunfighter recognize players who've committed a ton of effort into the game, TCS Tiger's Claw motivates people to gather up a maximum-size coop battle, etc. They're basically medals, whether or not you have an in-game medals case to view, so I can't imagine anyone really having a problem with these. They're fun extras to push players to explore or acknowledge accomplishment.

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Hot Dog (20)
Complete each Ring Game difficulty level

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Commando (10)
Earned ULF Commando Tattoo (15 frags in a Melee match)

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Dogfight (10)
Shot down first pilot in a Xbox LIVE match

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Ace (20)
Defeat 5 ships in a Ranked Xbox LIVE match without respawning

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Untouchable (20)
Reach wave 10 in Gauntlet without ever taking damage to your hull

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TCS Tiger's Claw (10)
Compete a 16 player Capital Ship game

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Hibernation (20)
Reach a streak of 5 in a Bearpit game

achievement-08.jpg

Gunfighter (20)
Win a Ranked Duel with each ship type

achievement-09.jpg

Navigator (10)
Travel through every gold jump gate in the game

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Retro (10)
Reach wave 20 in Meteor Storm

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Paladin (30)
Shoot down 1000 pilots on Xbox LIVE

achievement-12.jpg

Deathstroke (20)
Finish in first place in any Ranked Free For All match
 
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