Questions about Incentivizing Players

Do you plan to have Steam Achievements?
Do you plan to have Steam Trading Cards?
I read you plan to eventually do matchmaking. Is their a plan to have any sort of leveling or league system or ladder or elo or regular tournaments (or multiple of those things at once)? Basically, is there any plan to keep people invested in the multiplayer?
Are there any things I didn't specifically ask about that will keep players coming back for more?

I know these things are silly and artificial, but I find it a lot easier to play a game where I can easily tell I am making progress than a game where the only reasons to play are "for fun" or to get better which are a lot harder to measure.

It is a great game so far! Keep up the good work!

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It has been said that ranking / ladder will be imemented but my impression is is that the mohawk team is currently working on other features and doesn't think it is too important to spend time and energy on right now. Hopefully some lobbying campaigns by the userbase will encourage matchmaking to be implemented by christmas.

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Hey,

Thanks for the questions.

1. We will most likely have achievements. I'm a big stickler against achievements because I feel like a lot of games have them and they're not very interesting or fun. Great achievements can make a game better, but I don't want to have achievements just so players get some prize for something silly. My favorite achievement is the "one bullet challenge" from Half Life 2: Episode 1. It fundamentally changed how you played the game and it was a really fun thing to think about. Soren is strongly for achievements, so it is very likely that we will have them. When? I'm not sure, but closer to release.

2. Yes! We just need to get around to putting them in. What would you like to see in the trading cards? We may wait for more finalized art for the trading cards, but they are definitely going to be in the game.

3. Yes! Things are moving along pretty quickly in that regard. Quickmatch does do some auto-matchmaking currently, but we're not exposing a lot to the player right now because we're sorting out a lot of the problems that have been exposed by going live. I don't want to give a date, but I do feel like we will have some ranking/ladder system before Christmas and that with each new beta there will continue to extend the multiplayer experience, especially in matchmaking.

4. I'm not totally happy about our "daily game" feature, so I really want to try to figure out some solution to make that really great and interesting, or find some way that players have a reason to come back to the game daily to experience some new twist. There's a lot of other things we've talked about, but I don't want to spoil them for you.

I hope I answered your questions well. Thanks for asking them!

-Scott-

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Thanks DeftMonkey for the replies!

1. I personally enjoy the feeling of accomplishment after unlocking achievements. I even enjoy games like Achievement Unlocked where the whole game is finding achievements. I just like the sensation of progress. I think that having a preposterous number of achievements (like Starcraft 2 for example) is fun because you are constantly getting some sense of accomplishment and it feels like there are a million little side quests you can go on to make the game more interesting. Bonus points if these things unlock new in game avatars or tiny variations in how your buildings or bases or even black market effects (different pirate ships?!?). Really, no one does incentives better than Blizzard so shamelessly stealing their ideas would make me a happy customer.

"One Bullet Challenge" type quests are like awesome badges of honor and are definitely cool. However, as someone with limited time for gaming (or who prefers to sample lots of games than dedicate myself to few), I find having too many super long and hard quests a little disheartening so at least for me, balance is the key.

2. Beautiful art! Perhaps all the special buildings in the game and the 4 headquarters? Really its up to you, I just like the trading cards so I can make a badge proudly showing what my favorite games are! Not to mention the emoticons and wallpapers you get for that!

3. EXCELLENT!

4. I eagerly await what you guys come up with

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