Objectives
PLEASE NOTE
⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠
This is a TEMPORARY placeholder for objective definitions - for the Admin team's discussion and write up.
⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠
Objectives usually consist in one or several challenges grouped together under a game. Completing its requirements will award you the objective if you both can prove it and own the game.
We follow the DIRE, which stands for "Developer Intended, Recognized, or Encouraged" as an overarching criteria for a point-valued objective.
Primary Objectives
Also known as POs.
Challenges presented by the developer of a game in an unambiguous manner. Typically in forms associated with primary gameplay progression.
Examples include:
- Steam achievements, Playstation Trophies, XBOX Achievements. Any achievement that was published by the developer of the game.
- Completing difficulties and modes (that terminate).
- Assigned unambiguous thresholds of competency (grades, medals, ranks, badges). May be paired with difficulties and modes. For example, two modes, - Campaign and Boss Rush, both have Normal and Hard difficulties, the player is awarded a grade based on performance from D-A, A ranks would be PO in both modes on Hard. These do not need to be permanent.
- Readily accessed physical content that is not deeply hidden or obscure. Bonus levels.
- Tracked collectibles (the collectibles must be permanent, a mode that terminates itself under criteria other than intentional manual deletion are exempt).
Difficulty order
Objectives in games tend to be ordered top-to-bottom, with the intended progression meant to be starting from the bottom and climbing up. In some rare cases, objectives may be grouped according to modes, but the objectives inside these modes will be sorted as previously described.
Secondary Objectives
Also known as SOs. Currently labeled with (S) at the end of the objective's name.
Anything that can be argued to fall within DIRE that is not immediately obvious or may be ambiguous to most players, or unambiguous but highly indirect forms of gameplay progression.
Examples include:
- Levels behaving differently based on a specific and unique play pattern.
- Ambiguous rewards based on performance (impermanent minor changes in cutscenes).
- Challenges found on or presented by a developer through the platform in which the game was published on. Challenges seen in officially published game manuals, or developer made content through the steam workshop for example.
- Developer curated community made content within a game (varying degrees of curation may be on a case by case basis); challenges within that content are exempt unless also explicitly encouraged by the developers (for example, beating curated maps from Track Central in Trials, but not getting diamond medals on them).
- Impermanent collectibles.
- Easter eggs (within reason).
- Developer expressed encouragement to attempt something found consistently and unambiguously within a game.
- Multiple playable characters for existing PO content (does not pair with thresholds of competency unless uniquely tracked / balanced for it) Solo mode completions in games built for multiplayer where singleplayer is a selectable option (under consideration)
- 1CC/one-credit-clear in games where credit use would result in score being voided or a game over is present (may be paired with difficulty, may not be paired with multiple characters/weapon types/ships/etc. unless tracked).
- Rhythm ranks/grades which require timing/accuracy higher than that of an FC (subject to consideration / further refinement).
- Weapon/item unlocks that are not explicitly tracked collectibles.
- Bonuses obtained through performance that are not directly associated with grades/ranks. (1-ups, extra lives, etc. if they would be hard enough.)
- Beating pre-loaded high scores / times that are set by the dev and visible in a context where beating them is encouraged.
Community Objectives
Also known as COs.
They are everything else that can't be included in the above categories.
Traditionally made to be arbitrary challenges with no articulable representation in game. They're outside of the scope of DIRE.
No real rules for how they are structured, as long as they can be described clearly and seem like fun or make sense for the game in question. They do not require to have been beaten by the recommender, but in cases where the challenge seems particularly niche, this may assist in pushing it through.
Additionally, when something that would otherwise fit the criteria of a PO/SO (such as an achievement), but it ends up being redundant, grindy, dynamic in difficulty, or player vs player related (rarely), it may be relegated to CO.
Optionally, they can also be created as checkpoints for a particularly hard objective, allowing to set milestones to practice on without going into intense segmentation between primary objectives.
FAQ
"What does uncleared mean? What are uncleared objectives?"
You may find some games with primary or secondary objectives listed as (UNCLEARED) with 1 point. These are objectives that we know exist for a game, but they haven't been cleared yet by anyone within the group and as such have not been valued.
Objectives listed as (UNVALUED) are those who have been cleared by someone within the group but have not yet received valuation for diverse reasons, such as being a recent completion, being unable to make a solid assessment of points, awaiting discussion/other clears, among others.
The reason they're listed as 1 point is because completions are currently based on whether your amount of points on a game match its total. As such, this band-aid patch prevents fake completions from appearing. This is scheduled to be fixed in a future update.
"What counts as a completion?"
Only completing all Primary Objectives in a game is enough for a completion. This also requires uncleared or unvalued objectives if they exist.
If you complete all Secondary Objectives, you will be awarded their points and an "overcompletion" in the game leaderboard, but it doesn't show up anywhere else other than your game list.
Completing all Community Objectives in a game does nothing.
"There's this cheevo in a RetroAchievement game..."
RetroAchievement sets may be created by "set developers" but they're still fundamentally normal users compared to the actual game. Even if the set has personalized challenges, they don't count as primary or secondary objectives due to the simple fact that they were made by "the community". It would go fundamentally against what we're trying to avoid.
If a RA achievement happens to align with our DIRE criteria and has no abstract/extra requirements, then it's welcomed! In fact, due to RA sets having cheat protection, they're often a very solid proof method.
"There has been a proof change in an achievement-based objective but I still own it?"
Usually this happens because we have "grandfathered" you in as a token of good gesture, so that you don't have to replay the game if it's not mandatory. Most likely, the objective or the game has not changed, but something has been found that requires the submission of proof for any future clearers.
There have been rare cases, usually entire game overhauls, where we won't grandfather previous clearers of objectives, so it's not a given.
"I still don't understand what SOs are! Why does it have to be so complicated?"
This change has no negative aspects! If anything, it's a net positive.
Back when we had either POs or COs, there were several hypotethical situations we met through the road that would thread a fine line between what could be one or the other. The result was potentially a (more) arbitrary choice. Including SOs on the list means that not only these obtuse situations (coloquially called "tomatos" 🍅) can be solved without much issue, but that we can actually have a much more solid definition for what we consider the main focus of a game -that is, the POs-.
Look at it in another way: nothing has been demoted from what would have been a PO originally to a CO. If anything, there are a few stuff that originally were COs that can now be included as SOs.