"Feats Of Strength" (unobtainable achievements)

[ApeOfMazor]

After checking out my World of Warcraft achievements I noticed that many outdated achievements I had obtained are being counted in the massive list of achievements for the game. In WoW whenever an achievement becomes unobtainable or you miss a timeframe for it it is added to a section of achievements known as "feats of strength". This site tracks 5600 WoW achievements, but there are currently only about 3900+ obtainable at the moment in game I believe. The idea in WoW is that you should always be able to 100% the achievements currently in game.

This got me to thinking about the current situation with many games having completely unobtainable achievements due to server shut downs or changes to the game that left other achievements unobtainable. Would extending the logic for World of Warcraft achievements work here? I don't know how technically difficult it might be to implement something like this, but I'd propose that achievements that can no longer be obtained be marked as "feats of strength" or whatever. They would appear with the game but listed in a separate category. They would no longer count towards completion %. They would still award exp to those who obtained them before shut downs.

This would probably be a huge community effort that wouldn't happen overnight. I know at least for PS games that lists have been compiled of many unobtainable achievements. Now how platinum trophies would be handled is another matter, I'd say that they would have to go into feats of strength category, but still you'd have 100% with no platinum.

Thoughts on this idea? Would this be too much work? Would achievement hunters not like this system?

 

[CaptainScarLeg]

Unobtainable achievements are already reported by users on this site but I don't know if they're actually marked as unobtainable in the site's database in some way or if they're just made a note of somewhere to reference when investigating potential cheating (that's not my area so I don't know). If they are marked in the database then I imagine that could be used to automatically determine which achievements could be ignored for counting towards 100% completion.

The issue is how that would be displayed on profiles. It would be nice to have games show as 100% complete without needing the unobtainable achievements, but you don't want to make it seem like something is being taken away from players who unlocked every achievement before they were unobtainable, even if they do get more achievements and exp. There's also the debate of whether or not an "obtainable 100%" should count as a "true 100%" or not and how that should be reflected in completion statistics and such. It's tricky.

I did recently suggest additional completion markers for the site and the platinum marker would work in a similar way to what you're proposing; it would count the base-set of trophies for a game and ignore additional/DLC trophies. You wouldn't get a completely filled progress bar but the game is clearly marked to show the base set of trophies was earned. Maybe something similar could be done for "obtainable 100%" games.

 

[Endar of NTA]

After checking out my World of Warcraft achievements I noticed that many outdated achievements I had obtained are being counted in the massive list of achievements for the game. In WoW whenever an achievement becomes unobtainable or you miss a timeframe for it it is added to a section of achievements known as "feats of strength". This site tracks 5600 WoW achievements, but there are currently only about 3900+ obtainable at the moment in game I believe. The idea in WoW is that you should always be able to 100% the achievements currently in game.

This got me to thinking about the current situation with many games having completely unobtainable achievements due to server shut downs or changes to the game that left other achievements unobtainable. Would extending the logic for World of Warcraft achievements work here? I don't know how technically difficult it might be to implement something like this, but I'd propose that achievements that can no longer be obtained be marked as "feats of strength" or whatever. They would appear with the game but listed in a separate category. They would no longer count towards completion %. They would still award exp to those who obtained them before shut downs.

This would probably be a huge community effort that wouldn't happen overnight. I know at least for PS games that lists have been compiled of many unobtainable achievements. Now how platinum trophies would be handled is another matter, I'd say that they would have to go into feats of strength category, but still you'd have 100% with no platinum.

Thoughts on this idea? Would this be too much work? Would achievement hunters not like this system?

Awesome idea. And definitely something I have thought about before. I suggest the name "Legacy Achievements", and basically divide every achievement/trophy list into regular, obtainable achievements, and the Legacy Achievements. And yes the community would to flag and keep track of these things. But they already do if they're hunting achievements. I would absolutely love if this was implemented, and would definitely use the site more if this was part of it. It would be a huge thing, and no other sites have done it yet that I know of.