Achievement Filter.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Apparently, a lot of people see the ingame chat achievements as a nuisance. Was shocked to see someone not understand congratulations going out the other day, to someone who toppled the dreadfell boss (and subsequent 'event' (spoilers withheld) for the first time. Apparently, the achievements present such clutter in chat, that folks turn them off.

Now, while this is of course there prerogative, it seems a better solution would be to allow a filter for what achievements are displayed in chat. I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to toss a congratulations to someone who just got "Evil Denied (Roguelike)" or "Against All Odds (Insane)" or similar landmark achievements. But they find the constant clutter of "level 10", "level 20", "The arena", "a secret city" and other common ones to be ridiculous amounts of clutter.

Can we (A) filter achievements on the user end, so that when incoming chat messages are received, it checks against a user defined list, and displays or doesn't display them in the chat portion of our screen only if we allow that kind? (Seems like this could be something set on the user end of the Tome interface, rather then the servers themselves, but I'm on programmer...) Or perhaps even allow payers to set what achievements they want to broadcast. (To cut down on the clutter in the first place.)

(B), It might also be nice to program something into the engine to differentiate the chat messages for the FIRST time a player profile ever earns an achievement. Instead of "Player earned achievement 'The Arena'" it would state (the first time, and the first time ONLY) "Player earned achievement 'The Arena' for the first time!". And then we could allow the chat filters to always permit the FIRST time the achievements are earned, regardless of player settings. This is always an important landmark for newer players (some of them anyway. Truly new players are always proud of there first level 10, or level 20...) Being able to allow them to have some congratulations and applause over that would be nice, but reducing them to only display the first time if players have that achievement blocked, would still reduce chat clutter to the point of being manageable. I recognize this part is probably harder to program, but between the two, this seems like it would help and keep more people aware of what goes on around them, keeping tome social instead of reclusive.

Comments? Thoughts?

[Amphouse]

Great ideas, I have achievements turned off because there are just far too many "The Arena" and "Utterly Destroyed" type achievements that spam the chat. This would let me turn them on again to actually see the worthwhile ones. I'm thinking the second suggestion would be the best course of action, achievements should be one-time only.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Every win is always worth bragging about, just as every Atamathoned, and a few others. It's the common ones that spam chat over and over. But allowing the player control over which ones they want to see more then once, or at all, would be a good idea. I don't think making ALL of them, one time only events is the right choice. Some are significant challenges, even if you've done them before. (OTOH, with the two ideas, you can simply filter so all of them appear first time only, and never again yourself, so you could have your own idea, should you so choose.)

[Sirioh]

I like (B) especially, with perhaps a few special cases that are always displayed as you indicate, for example defeating the master, defeating the ambush, clearing vor armory vault, or winning.

[darkgod]

Implementing:
- "first time" achievements are duly noted
- "important" achievements are displayed in a special color
- "other" achievements are all the others
- chat filter allows to filter all three kind; existing stetting will be reseted when upgrading to 104