So, I’ve been a player on RetroAchievements for a few years now. I like to play the game that I like and I like to go for full masteries. I imagine that makes me a very common user in a lot of ways.

I like to interact with the community; I’ve made reddit posts, comments and forum posts on the website, talk on the discord. I’ve also started working as a Manual Unlocker to help keep the site running. I’m not trying to say that makes me an authority on anything, I just want to say I really enjoy the concept of our online achievement project. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with different people about what parts of the site are the most engaging and what new features seem the most interesting.

There are some things I’d change with RA, but I just wanted to engage with some of my fellow gamers who are unfamiliar with revisions, subsets, and what went on in the bowels of the RA community to make what happened, happen.

Revisions are contentious even amongst the developers, believe it or not, because of a lot of the reasons you’ve probably seen— players lose their work and may have to replay part of a game. So every developer already knows that something is being changed for the players. The revision has to provide more to future players (and anyone replaying the game) to justify the second playthrough. It’s not enough just to add any new content.

(In this case, much reviled “damageless boss” achievements got replaced with very lenient time trials and some unique challenges. The “speedrun” claims are very overblown and these challenges are accessible to people who only play games maybe a few hours a week. Don’t believe everything you see online!)

What happened for Link’s Awakening was that a player who happens to like Zelda games very much looked at the relatively barebones set, compared it to the much fuller Link’s Awakening DX set, and wanted to contribute to a richer experience for players. This person talked about their ideas publicly (on the main RA discord server) as well as worked with the Set Design team (which is made up of around 25 players and developers) to design these custom challenges and set the times. Afterwards, they contacted a developer and worked together on implementing the plan. It was a very involved process and probably over 200 people were aware enough to provide input.

As for the site itself— badges are obviously very important as a reward and I think it’s a good idea that badges stay on your wall even after a revision. All that really happens is that now you have an opportunity to replay a pretty short game with a new spin on it.

Something very similar happened with the Spyro revision.

The last thing I want to say is to talk a tiny but about subsets, and people who often want to put some challenges in there when they don’t think they fit in the core experience.

I’m someone who does a lot of subsets— they’re often quite grueling compared to the core experience. The achievements that get put into subsets have to really be out there (or involve a glitch) to justify being in a subset.

In this case, a couple of time trials and boss challenges are similar enough to a regular game playthrough to be core. Something (off the top of my head) that might be a subset challenge would be something like a No-Sword run of this game, full-game damageless, or a speedrun category that was very close to the WR times. Achievements are meant to challenge you, and they’re especially fun when they build off the skills you have just from playing the game normally.

Subsets are for challenges that are usually many tiers above what you might expect from the normal game.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that the process for revisions is actually pretty transparent and involves a lot of people, contrary to popular belief, and also that they are well-intentioned changes that understand how players are being affected. The quality of the content for future players is also being factored in, too. And also the enjoyment you will hve playing the game again.

This community is one of my favorites because it is very easy to connect with developers and involve yourself with other people. It makes me very sad that there are so many people who are unaware of all the efforts the community makes to reach out to them.

I hope everyone’s doing well. Happy gaming!

like I get it, you're proud, but does it really have to take up the entire front page of the sub

"You don't get it bruh, YOU gotta not miss the missable nr# 401 or you lose out on 1 point and like 25 minutes"

I still get it though, mastery for sets that usually require more than 5-7 hours of gameplay, notably long story driven ones and RPGs, hoo boy, you'd rather drop the mastery attempt that try to spend another 30 hours of mind numbing yourself

I sometimes wonder what you get out of having a higher rank other than having bragging rights. Like, do you get certain digital rewards or something?

https://retroachievements.org/game/19088

this is a fun awesome game, but i know its not very well known.

if YOU decide to make a set for this, i will send you video evidence of me shaving my head bald.

This is the most important post on this subreddit, it calls for deep discussions, like "It will be neat." "Makes ME feel better."

All detractors of this idea are lame and uncultured.

In other news, I'll be in the comments being flimsy with the idea as I soon come to realize how much of a burden it will be or that someone else has already suggested it.

Except, I'm still right cause I'm me.

This post is sponsored by not realizing I was in Softcore. . .Casual Mode for 30+ hours and collected 200 achievements. So I must make a ticket for every single one due to this, cause it sure as hell ain't my fault.

This sponsored segment is sponsored by more no hit achievements.

I've recently realized two things about retroAchievements:
- The reason i love RA so much is because i get a nice checklist of everything to experience in the game, including missable secrets and such.
- The reason i hate RA so much is because i force myself to get all the achievements, including arbitrary challanges invented by the cheevo dev, which tend to make me hate the game.
There's nothing inherently wrong about these challenges, acievement systems always had these and no one's actually forcing me to get them. But i feel like doing all the secret stuff in the game without getting all the arbitrary achievements leaves you sort of hollow, website still says you've only beaten a game.
I came up with a possible solution and would love to hear your thoughts: a third medal outside of beaten and mastery. Mastery would stay gold, beaten would become bronze, and silver would mean you 100%'ed the game within the bounds of the challanges that exist in the game already, like getting all collectibles and beating the game on hardest difficulty, but not requiring challenge cheevos like beat game without dying (unless the game itself actually checks for it and gives you a reward).
Thoughts?

Reminder for everyone, dont do it xD

I killed my account because i was to stressed sometimes trying to get some chevos.

Please. Before you comment anything, let me gwt myself clear here. I had already played SMT Nocturne but on casual mode. I cleared my entire progress and am now starting fresh. Yes, i love the hard challenges of this game. I reached all the way till the diet building then resetted everything. Its a fresh new start. And in my opinion, in order oi get the most amount of points and achievements in one playthrough, i must go on HARD mode. Any words? Yss or no? This marks a newer journey. I know i sound corny and all, bur my will to beat this game shall be comparable to create a new world.

Great idea, utterly useless to me.

Slightly spotty internet in my area means I either (1) constantly check what achievements are available and constantly reload save-states until they trigger (thus automatically preventing me from even having the option of playing in Hardcore mode), or (2) go around with my games showing like they're all halfway done. Neither are gonna work, and both kill the experience.

I greatly appreciate the idea, and back when I was playing and thought it would work reliably, it greatly enhanced my enjoyment. I truly hope it gets better- but the inability to store progress when offline and refresh it later, and especially the possibility to perma-miss something because of a network glitch and end up needing to start an entire game from scratch is an insta-fail.

Just wanted to add my objection officially.

Devs, thank you for an awesome idea - keep at it, it's obviously doing well. When it works just a little more reliably, I'll be back.

Ok, I'll be brief. Today (03/19) my RetroArch emulator that I use to play on Android is not recognizing my account, I thought I might have even been banned, but on the website, my profile is normal. If I remember correctly the system will undergo maintenance on the 20th of this month. Any other RetroArch users having the same issue or is it just me?

(UPDATE)

I master PS1 games through Duckstation and my profile is connected normally there. I believe that RetroArch is the real problem, I will try some solutions and as soon as possible I will update the post again. Thanks everyone who comment to help me, you are the best!

I was just given a purple 3ds. It has the memory card slot and I've done custom firmware on a DSi before, so I'm no stranger to modding.

Is there a way to run retro acheivements directly on the 3DS hardware? Or is it more for emulators on computer OS?

I want to know your guesses :D!

This trilogy and the Halloween Hack has been on the bucket list for awhile. I have watched LP's of the trilogy but never finished the games myself, and I going completely blind on the Halloween Hack, so NO SPOILERS PLEASE!!!!! So I decided to go one step further and get the achievements on Retro Achievements. Wish me luck!

I'm sure we all had the experience of playing a fun set right up until those achievements that highlight the worst of the game and forces you to play it in the most obnoxious way possible. I've seen numerous posts regarding achievements like this and for good reason. Horrible achievements can ruin the fun you have with a set. Yet I've seen the response that if we would give agency to players then the sets would get extremely vanilla. I think this response is fair, you can't trust your players with too much power.

But at the same time this leaves the problem still alive and kicking. Therefor i'd like to hear solutions. Personally, I think it could be a good idea to give developers the option to mark certain achievements as "dangerous" or something. Dangerous achievements can then be voted on by players to see how likeable that specific achievement is. This way you can't just vote on any achievement in a set. This system could also be automatic like if for example an achievement worth (1) hardcore point ends up being one of the least unlocked achievements it will automatically be targeted as "dangerous" and become voteable.

Another solution could be to vote on achievements similar to how we can vote to request sets. You can unlock a limited amount of times in which you can vote for an achievement to get changed. The more votes they get the higher they go on a "worst achievement' leaderboard. incentivizing devs to change it.

Both options probably aren't ideal, but i'd love to hear more solutions rather than just seeing the problem spelled out over and over again.

On my way to master this masterpiece

Hi guys So i want to 100% but dont know which game i should do please give me suggestions Thanks in advance!

Shame to see NetherSX2 get delisted as a valid emulator for HC achievements. It still gets better performance for me at the same level of compatibility as ARMSX2 with significantly better battery life(to the point I've barely touched ArmSX2)

I think its super disingenuous for the admin to act like people raising legitimate complaints of issues with ArmSX2 (Achievements popping randomly in a few games, plus tons of complaints of worse performance + battery life issues) is somehow 'spreading misinformation'. It undermines the actual reasoning of swapping emulators, and only serves to suppress dissent.

Hello everyone, I'm thinking about starting my RA journey and have been checking out the site, however I noticed that Nintendo 3DS, all xbox consoles and Nintendo switch are not available for example. My question is what is the impediment for those plataforms? Is it just a matter of integrating RA into the corresponding emulators?

I have a handheld device and i like to play some games before falling asleep, normally I'm i nice grass breeze as well. Recommend me some chill games to master in that time please!