Achievements I Would Add to Old Content

I'm actually not the biggest fan of achievements and prefer it when MMOs don't have them, as the big UI pop-ups tend to take me out of the world too much, but seeing how they seem to be considered pretty much a standard feature of most games nowadays, I've learned to live with them. Sometimes they'll even motivate me to do something! I won't necessarily go out of my way to hunt for achievements, but if I'm already doing something, and there's an achievement to do just a little bit more for example, that can definitely work as an incentive.

For those who don't know, SWTOR originally launched without an achievement system, but added one with the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion in 2013, which included a lot of retrofitted achievements for older content. However, there were always some things that made me go "huh" - every time I found myself a bit surprised that there wasn't an achievement for a particular thing. Here's my top five list of achievements that I would still add to old content:

1. Being sneaky in the Black Hole

In first place, we have the mission that inspired this whole post: [Daily] Eyes and Ears on Republic side or [Daily] Hypermatter Directive on Imp side. These are mirrored dailies that require you to click on five spots in a warehouse while navigating a bunch of sensors that will spawn a guard droid each if you trip them. There's no particular punishment for this other than having to kill the droid so you don't have to do it perfectly, but I at least try to be perfectly sneaky every time, and on the rare occasion when I succeed, I always feel extremely proud. Alas, the game doesn't agree that this is a special feat and there's no achievement for it. If any daily mission ever deserved an achievement, I think it's this one.

2. Kill Esh-ka

One type of common achievement that was added with Rise of the Hutt Cartel was to kill a bunch of mobs on every planet, often sorted into different categories. On Voss for example, there's one to kill hostile droids, members of the opposite faction, and several different kinds of beasts. I didn't inspect all the newly added achievements in advance, so as I quested my way across the different planets for the first time after the expansion, it was always interesting to see what would pop up.

I have this distinct memory of doing this on Belsavis, and at one point wondering why nothing had popped up yet for the dozens of Esh-ka I'd killed. And then I checked and found that there wasn't even an achievement for these mobs... which make up what feels like half the enemies on the planet. I always thought that was a bit odd.

After thinking about it a bit more, I can only guess that the devs were worried that something like "kill 100 Esh-ka" might sound kind of... genocidal? Generally the kill achievements for humanoids ask you to take out a faction, not a species. But that strikes me as something that could be addressed with proper wording - "defeat 100 Esh-ka escapees" or something. I want my wading through tunnels and tunnels full of these to be acknowledged!

3. Harmonised flashpoint achievements

When a new flashpoint comes out nowadays, it generally has a pretty standard set of achievements: do it x times on story/veteran mode, do it x times on master mode, kill each boss at least once, and then maybe a couple of extra achievements for bonus bosses or special mechanics. This wasn't always the case though, and if you look back at the achievements archive, there are quite a few flashpoints that only have an achievement for running them once on story or vet mode, such as the Esseles, Black Talon, Athiss, Mandalorian Raiders and more. I think this is because at the time, they were low-level content that didn't scale, and it didn't really make sense to ask people to re-run a level 20 flashpoint twenty times after they'd out-levelled it (though there are always alts I guess...) Nowadays though, with everything being scaled, I don't see why these achievements shouldn't be the same across the board. Same with flashpoints that are lacking achievements for their bonus bosses, such as Assault on Tython and Korriban Incursion.

I know some old-timers would hate me for this - "I've already run the Esseles a hundred times and now you want me to run it another twenty times for a new achievement in 2024?!" Well... yeah. I'd still do it.

4. Planetary storylines

This one is fairly simple: I think it's a bit of a missed opportunity that there are achievements for completing all the class stories, but none for doing all the planetary storylines at least once. I'm not saying they're all narrative masterpieces, but I think they add a lot of context for each planet and achievements could make for a good incentive to encourage people to give them a try. I still occasionally see comments from players who try to do literally nothing but their class story and then wonder why they end up under-levelled at some point.

5. Exploration missions

I've always felt a bit sour about the fact that exploration missions get hidden by default nowadays, until I heard Swtorista say in a stream that they apparently confused people? I don't know, that was before we had the purple markers for main story missions... either way, I think at the very least they deserve an achievement of their own as well, to give people an incentive to check them out, similar to the planetary storylines. For these, I guess I wouldn't make a separate one for each planet, but simply something like "complete 50 exploration missions across the galaxy" (or however many there are - I wouldn't require you to do them all, but probably something like two thirds of them).

Have you ever come across something in game that made you go "huh, I'm surprised there isn't an achievement for that"? Feel free to share in the comments!