[2020] What am I missing about adding Explorer Ring Achievements to the tracker?

Next to each achievement's name is a little pin. Press that icon to pin the achievement to your tracker. You can add up to 5 achievements to your tracker at a time.

So, creating paths for area tasks is something I've thought about.

The tricky thing about paths, though, is that they're linear, and you might not necessarily want to do area tasks in that specific order.

I endeavoured to do the explorer paths in an optimal order, but that's trickier for the advanced ones where you may or may not have met certain (eg skill) requirements.

The other factor (I mentioned this on a Stutorial stream) is I'm currently helping Mod Asherz convert all our achievements to a more efficient data format to address some critical technical debt that's been a growing concern, and that's taking up all of my time because we need to get it out ASAP.

The focus is very much on data migration and avoiding feature creep, as my producer wants us to release this project as quickly as possible, as he'd much rather we were working on higher-priority player-facing or business needs.

We have nearly 3,000 achievements, so just supporting all the quirky exceptions in our existing achievements has been a time-consuming challenge in itself.

That's not counting the hundreds of unique path achievements, either - I'm going to have to come back to those in a second batch, because also rewriting the path system would further delay this project, and we absolutely need to address the achievements now, before it holds up other projects in development that'll need to add even more achievements.

So in the (hopefully) short term we'll also have to maintain a hybrid system.

Consequently I need to postpone any further work on paths or adding new ones until that's done.

You pointed out that paths have more guidance (support for coordinates and tips), which means less reliance on the wiki, but comes with a cost (more in game text = more pressure on our over-stressed localisation team, and the more detailed the text, the more likely it'll get out of date and then need re-translation, as the game is always evolving).

The other other factor is I feel like adding paths for area tasks is papering over a larger issue.

If you need paths because navigating the achievement system to pick your next area task is a problematic user flow (and having completed area tasks on several personal accounts myself, I acknowledge that it is), then we should address that rather than requiring an alternative.

So the approach I've taken, since I had to put category information on all these achievements anyway, was to split the area task difficulties into subcategories.

Therefore shorter lists, less scrolling, less pain. The achievement system remembers which subcategory you last selected, so getting back to pick the next one/few should be smoother.

But putting this information out there makes me wary.

By saying that, I've made a 'promise', an expectant hope that what I've implemented will be released.

And I have absolutely no power to guarantee that.

This is where communicating about our current projects or plans gets a bit delicate.

I'm very fond of transparent communication.

I feel talking about things early on and throughout development helps ensure what we deliver is what's wanted.

(Though it gets very tricky when different players want fundamentally contradictory things, and internal stakeholders also want things that may not be of interest to certain players, but we're absolutely required to deliver.)

But things change a lot during development, and that communication eats into the development time.

Everything has a cost, even the good things.

Keeping you informed can lead to mis-information as expectations get set, things change many many times during development, and different versions of that information can be set in players' minds, leading to disappointment.

This (achievement engine) project has nearly been cancelled several times, for example.

On a micro and macro level, priorities shift all the time.

We've had to justify the technical necessity of it all the way.

Initially, we'd hoped to use this opportunity to do more usability improvements to the achievement interface.

If we'd communicated those intentions early, we'd have just set you up for disappointment, because they're now all off the table.

And we'd be scrambling for the rest of the project (and beyond, because players often wish we'd followed through as much as we do) to manage those expectations and override outdated information.

It's quite a dilemma. And I think, contributes to the current policy of only telling you about updates when they're close to release, when they're less likely to change.

As much as I want to have an open dialogue, I've probably already said too much.

Thanks very much for your reassuring reply. I'm really enjoying the Stutorials. There's a lot to learn from the past. I hope you stune in next week for 2011's Lumbridge introductory tasks!