Hacker News Reader

Max or close-to-max achievements for a game also is an indicator of skill, could be used to weight a games scores more towards "recommended by skilled players" vs. "recommended by casual players" ?

View on HN

I would have a hard time equating achievement coimpletionism as skill, to me they are more of a measure of time spent in a game. Yes, some achievements in some games do require a mediocrum of skill, but most of them do not; they're used primarily as a form of feedback for the developer on how people play their game, and secondarily as a lure for completionists who want the points on their profile.

I agree. See for example achievement 'Astronomically Low Odds' from Faster Than Light: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Achievements

"Fail to evade 5 shots in a row with a full powered and upgraded engine."

It's almost pure luck. Wiki mentions ways that you can increase odds for you but still it's mainly luck.

It only dawned on me today that achievements aren't really for the players, they're the gaming equivalent of Mixpanel, allowing developers to see which parts of the game players are actually experiencing.

Yep, you could use achievement rarity too. If 100% of all players get an achievement don't use it for recommending or 1% have it increase the weighting?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com