This has been quite the ongoing thread but I wanted to add a few suggestions.
I just joined the community today and wanted to add the view of a newcommer.
First off I'm all about Old School gaming which Capcom has tried to stick to over the years and I have not been disappointed by a lot of their products.
From what I have seen Capcom makes their achievements and other in-game rewards challenging which is the way it should be, making their awards true awards.
I am just about to finish the full 1k in Lost Planet on the 360 and I must say I enjoyed the challenge and the game experience. I enjoyed it enough to consider getting Lost Planet 2 until I saw this and heard from all my friends about the Leaderboard achievements.
I am not all about achievements but one thing I hate more than anything else is being denied an opportunity to complete or compete in something that has been exploited by cheaters or boosters.
I am not saying I will never buy the game for I really want to but from what I see here the Devs or their management and legal team are not very quick to respond to a major issue which is telling me that their priorities are elsewhere and new projects take priority over their fans in favor of potential release day sales.
Seeing the amount of people posting here is telling me that there is a fan base and there will be garunteed sales of Lost Planet 3 should it ever come out.
In the past games have failed due to the developers, publishers, mgt etc not listening to their fans. I know you cant give into each and every complaint but from what I sere the leaderboard cheats have cause enough outcry to demand a quick response.
This game has been out almost a year now. I know in the beginning when the achievement system was new mistakes were made. Perfect examples are Quake 4 and G.R.A.W. with their leaderboards and the achievements attached to it with a major outcry from the fans. Look at where those franchises are. Quake 4 is dead and GRAW had to do a leaderboard reset after those achievements made enough people mad and the boosters are at it again.
There are people out there that purposely buy multiple consoles to boost themselves on the leaderboards to deny other people the achievement. This is poor behavior on their part but attaching achievements to it prompts leaderboard cheats.
Lost Planet 2 did not come out in the beginning era and the GRAW and Quake 4 issues were already well known and those kind of achievements should have never come out, PERIOD! But the damage is already done, if a fix were to come out that would solve this once and for all.
Now I do not know of any admins here nor do I know any devs or rumors but what I do know is that over the past 20 years in various forums I have heard this "in the works" line enough times to make me sick only to find out over and over it never happens. I have learned my lesson one to many times not to get my hopes up.
So, when I hear the leaderboard issue has been solved you will have a new customer, until then all I can do is suggest this.
Find someone fluent in Japanese and call Capcom Corporate and tell them that the leaderboard fix is important because we do not want bad PR and want to let our customers know that we will take care of any flaws in our product so they trust us and continue to keep buying from us with a positive experience. Then tell them to get on Microsoft and pester them for approval for this very reason for they are affected too.
This is not just about achievements, this is about more than that, this is about principle and trust between manufacturer and customer.
Whatever the outcome is will be unknown for now but I do have some suggestions for future titles concerning in game rewards/achievements/trophies.
Do:
Make the achievements hard or challenging, because it presents a challenge and makes a positve gaming experience with a lot of replay in it to keep the fans content enough until the next title comes out.
Make achievements that promote replayability, This keeps people playing the game and sometimes in a different light than before and the second experience can be more enjoyable than the first.
Make achievements that require Teamwork, It has been found that teamwork online or offline promotes a positive gaming experience.
Do Not:
Make any collectable achievements, this is a cheap ploy to sell more strategy guides and I find it absurd when publishers do this to make an extra buck. If you Went for the target marks on LP on extreme you will know what I am talking about.
Make any online versus achievements, this creates bad online gaming behavior which takes away from the true competitive experience and promotes boosting.
Make any leaderboard related anything, as you were probably bored to death hearing about this before cheaters and boosters will always hold the people with true skill hostage when this is the case.
There you have it, I hope that speaking my mind here might help further convince you to fix this issue or prevent any other ridiculous rewards or achievements in the future.
-TF
