TL;DR: Achievements being nerfed feels bad for people who have them completed. Creating a lower initial tier of achievement would solve both problems and keep both completionists and more casual mount hunters happy. (But please keep reading.)
First I want to say that my complaint about these nerfs isn’t calling for a reversion of the nerfs. I’m suggesting that there be better implementation of good intentions on the part of achievement development.
I fully understand that the BFA meta achievement “A Farewell to Arms” was too ambitious of a meta in its first iteration. It would have been very cumbersome for people who don’t traditionally do completionist achievement hunting. Some things needed to be removed from the meta; for example: PVP Island Expeditions being removed was an exceptionally good choice that no achievement person refutes.
But seeing the achievements we’ve already accomplished being nerfed outright? That’s…a slightly different solution to a overly-involved meta. These achievements aren’t unachievable now. They’re incredibly time consuming and take a lot of grit and resilience to complete, for sure. But that is the core aesthetic of achievements in World of Warcraft. They are intended to be a feature that most players won’t always unintentionally complete through regular gameplay. And the points that people have in their achievement collection are a reflection of the effort they’ve put in. The time doing it, sometimes the skill needed, the research completed, or the strategy in accomplishing large collections.
You should have just made all of these nerfed achievements a brand new first tier of two achievements. Like it’s fine if you want to make it “10 of” instead of “all” - but you should have made a new achievement instead of reducing the ones we’ve already completed and devaluing the work we’ve already done. Why devalue stuff we worked so hard for. Those achievements are still doable and you could have made lesser versions of all of them to satisfy more casual mount farmers. For example, instead of nerfing “Combating the Corruption” from “all” to “10 of” – you could have created a new achievement called “Resisting the Corruption” that required “10 of” and then kept “Combating the Corruption” with “all” required as the second tier achievement for an additional 10 points. This is more work – we know it is, and we respect that it would require more development time to handle. But we deserve the time we’ve already invested to be respected as players. I worked really hard getting all of those corrupted monsters and I even made friends in Uldum doing it that I wouldn’t have met if I had only needed 10.
This is something being discussed a lot in the achievement discord today and it’s something people have big feelings about. Please consider this topic and think carefully on how you retroactively address acheivements in the future.
I’m a bit aghast that you are actually here defending the design of Combating The Corruption in its current pre-11.0.7 form. Considering how easily BFA mobs can be one-shot today, the few problematic mobs on that achievement would be virtually impossible to find if it had been left on the meta in its existing form and the number of people hunting increased exponentially. It needed a nerf or the problematic mobs needed their spawns re-worked. The former scenario was much easier from an implementation standpoint so that’s probably why they went with it.
Some achievements can be challenging, yes. They shouldn’t be so time consuming as to equal portions of The Insane to accomplish, however. The Insane is a feat of strength for a reason.
On the flip side of the time-consuming spectrum is tedium. It’s Not A Tumor was extremely tedious to pull off even for someone who played the content very extensively during BFA (it’s me, I’m that person, and I didn’t even reach 200 total destroyed across my account). Again, such levels of tedium should be reserved for feats of strength if they are going to exist at all.
Achievements are intended to be awarded for things you do outside of normal gameplay. It’s not intended to always reward you for things you would just naturally complete.
The sooner you accept that things get nerfed over time, the happier you’ll be for it. I too worked hard for a lot of achievements and mount drops over the years, and I couldn’t give less of a damn if other people can get them nowadays for a fraction of the effort.
Gonna level with you: I genuinely don’t care if someone gets their timestamped achievement 6 years later for marginally less effort. We’ve had that since they added achievements with people getting heroic/mythic raid achievements years after for one-shotting a boss.
I am perfectly fine with the achievement being easier. There were some things on that list that were a bit unreasonable.
However, I would agree that having the newer nerfed versions of the achievements for the Meta being separate from the more grindy versions, would allow me to keep the version of the ones I’ve done already.
Nerf the Meta but let us keep the original versions as well. I want everyone to get Jani.
And the lion’s share of achievements already do this in the Exploration category (and to a lesser extent, Quests). Neither reasoning excuses the absolutely horrific design present with Combating The Corruption, and while you may feel proud that you stuck it out and dealt with that, it’s simply unacceptable that it was left in the state it was for so long.
I can get on board with the idea of the changed achievement criteria being separate precursor achievements to the originals.
The achievement isn’t broken. The mobs in Uldum and the function in which they spawn ARE. The fact that they’re nerfing the achievement instead of fixing the mobs that are bugged is ALSO another point in favor of developmental laziness.
I am so happy they removed the achievements that required PVP and the Reining Champion horse one. Imagine having to play horse jumping simulator for Jani.
I’m not saying I want the achievement removed, those who actually enjoyed doing that can keep their points, just don’t want to have to go back and do that.
Mechagon and Nazjatar has some absolute pain in the rear achievements, RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG.
Nothing worse than only needing one colour palette for available in 8 colors that only drops from hard mode reclamation rig and waiting for reclamation rig to finally be active so you can attempt hard mode only for some rando demon hunter to roll up and one shot the elementals before you can hit them with the super collider (which is in itself an RNG thing) and screw you out of doing hard mode.
Yeah. Both Mechagon and Nazjatar were brutal to finish. I worked on them both during SL.
I’d work on them intermittently so I didn’t throw my laptop out of the window
All achievements should be unattainable when they are no longer current content in order to appease this mindset. There would be no other “fair” way about it. Does not matter that the mobs are now trivial and anything challenging is now grueling.
Joking aside, the achievements are timestamped. They still show your progress upon completing the extra items with the date of completion, there is no reason to take Blizz time away from releasing new quality content to repair the Oblivion Elemental in Orgrimmar Visions from not counting towards completion if you kill it too quickly.
The fact they went back and even added this meta is a step in a good direction as well as addressing some of those achievements. Because who wants to fly around Nazjatar for hours killing 1-50,000 algae rock monsters to spawn a bigger algae rock monster from three expansions ago? The first time for me was bad enough
Exactly, events like that were an awful idea to begin with. It’s telling when something like that can launch and the community as a whole immediately realises “uh oh, this will be impossible next expansion.”
Maybe they should hire a player or two whose sole job is looking at forthcoming content and saying “from a player’s perspective, this is a terrible idea?”
Might save us from getting any more of those stupid “need 3 people to summon” mechanics.
Speak only for yourself, not “people”. I have been playing since 2008 and I couldn’t care less if someone has easier time with something than I did. I do not feel bad. I am happy for others.
