once more, for old time's sake

wow what a depressing title. never fear, we are not shutting down. we are, however, coming to the end of our first month of the year. i know it seems too soon already. next week monday will be the last "official" update to the chart for the month of January. i wish that all the months would end so cleanly, but i am certain that they won't. that won't stop me from doing my best to maintain the chart appropriately.

in the world of avatar awards, there has been an update to the Halo Waypoint collection. now you can earn the Eva helmet for you avatar. i say earn, but i really mean slave over an overheating xbox to reach level 50 of Halo Waypoint. those familiar with the Halo tracking system know that earning that level requires earning achievement points throughout all of the existing games and dlc currently available for the Halo series. as part of my desire to 100% all of the games i own, i may eventually earn this trophy of sorts. i don't expect that to happen any time soon though.

a slight update to the status of our efforts to include PS3 trophies. we have come to the conclusion that the only sensible way to make a comparable chart is to attach seemingly arbitrary point values to the existing trophy system. it was originally discussed that 20 points seemed the reasonable and appropriate point value to assign each trophy taking into account that each retail game has an average of between 40-50 trophies, and the PSN games are around 10 per. upon further investigation, i have noted that this would be ridiculous in the instance of some games like Avatar: The Last Air Bender, which would garner a whopping 100 points with a total of 5 trophies. as a complete opposite, Burnout Paradise has a net worth of 1,960 points, which is almost double the amount of one single xbox game with no dlc!

of course this was a gross error on my part when i devised the plan. in an effort to correct that error, i have decided that each retail game will simply be simple equation in which the the number of available trophies, including the infamous Platinum trophies, for each game (be it a retail or PSN title) is divided amongst 1,000 points or 200 points respectively. then round down to the nearest whole number. each trophy, this time excluding the Platinum trophy, will be worth that point value, and the remaining points leftover in the thousand fold will be assigned to the Platinum.

sound confusing enough? i thought so, perhaps an example is in order.
let us return to Burnout Paradise, again with 98 available trophies total.
1,000/98=10.204081632653
round to 10
multiply 97(we can't count the Platinum here) by the point value of 10 = 970
then 1,000 - 970 = 30 and thirty point goes to the Platinum trophy.
the other way works as well. obviously this will be a lot more work than the 360 chart, so hopefully the updates will be as frequent (i doubt it) since it will involve a lot more research. the PS3 100k chart will launch at the end of the month. we will try to make it as backward recording as possible, but again with the amount of work involved in just obtaining the score, we may only maintain monthly updates.

Correction and Rant

Evening, ladies and gents.

First, a bit of a correction. I was originally informed that the two Assassin Creed II DLC expansions were due out on January 31st. Ubisoft, today, announced that the first expansion will be out on January 28th and that the second will be released sometime in February. The first expansion is entitled Battle of Forli and will set you back 320 Microsoft Points ($4). No words on achievements yet. Though, with the second expansion in a month, I wouldn't see it being more than 125 points.

Second, a bit of news crossed my desk earlier this week and it's a bit disheartening. Activision has chosen to forgo renewing their license for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, thus having the DLC for the game removed from the Xbox Live Marketplace. The game is still at 1,250 points for 100% completion. What's that mean, really? It means that new players and players like me, who held off buying the DLC in favor of DLC for games like Borderlands, will never be able to complete the game as it stands.

Activision claims that the DLC was only intended to be a "limited time offer". With no plans on offering a "gold edition" of the game to included the DLC, this leaves many players and ahievement hounds with incomplete gaming experiences. What is the point of offering such a thing? Yes, I'm fully aware that DLC is a completely optional addition to titles, but this proves the point why there should absolutely be no online multiplayer achievements or DLC-based achievements. Between games becoming too old to earn anything via online because no one plays it anymore and content removed for various reasons, these two arenas of the gaming world need to go.

Honestly, though, I don't think I'd be so angry if I wasn't so mad at myself for not buying them. Still, come on. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Anyways, happy gaming!

-XCinX

newer and more improved!

ok some tiny changes that may easily be overlooked. we now have our gamercards posted on the right side. giving you a better idea of our current gamerscores and of course most recently played games. also, the chart has been fixed back to its original easy to update self, also with some added touches. as always that can be viewed behind the last post on the front page.

now that the chart has resumed a tiny bit of normalcy, we can get back to adding on other newcomers, playing games, and working towards a solution to the PS3 trophies issue. an issue mainly focused around being able to track PS3 trophies. i have some ideas, but really what is needed is some collective tool that gathers all the data in one place. then we can simply capture that data and update it here. i suppose i will have to look into exactly how the PS3 gamercards work.

but for now, enjoy the updates!

Assassin's Creed 2 DLC Reminder

Just to give everyone a head's up: new DLC!

On January 31st, Ubisoft will be dropping 2 new DLC expansions for on the same day! It is unknown exactly how many new achievements this will add, or what the cost of the expansions will be, but needless to say we'll need these to keep out completion percentages up. Personally, as this is the only game I've completed to 100% (that wasn't Dash of Destruction) so I know this will be a day one purchase for me.

Again, the DLC expansions are Battle of Forli and Bondfire of the Vanties, both drop on January 31st.

Happy gaming.

there's good news, and there's a llama

ok so the good news is, the chart is up and running of sorts. for some odd reason, i cannot seem to remove the dollar sign from the chart on the y-axis. i do not know how it got there, but as of now i guess it is here to stay.

some things to note about the chart, most obvious would be the fact that only four people are on it currently. this too is temporary, and will be updated as soon we have a more official listing of this year's participants. the gamertags that are currently present are primarily the founders of the group, and i am fairly certain that they are all continuing on this year.

another thing to note, is the fact that currently the chart appears as a widget. this is not my preferred method, and i am currently seeking ways to remove it as such. there many reasons motivating my actions, the most important of which is the fact that i do not want to advertise for Google sans payment. also, the widget is extremely difficult to update without practically doing the entire chart over again from scratch each time. pretty much all the issues are related to hosting. the site that originally held all of the coding for the previous chart is no longer with us, and as a result i am looking to other free hosting services to make the magic happen. until then, this will suffice.

as always, please point any math errors my way. the way the points work is a continuous upward scale, so the current point update gets added to the previous week's. i have adjusted/subtracted any points earned before the 31st of December from the previous year. unless, at some point we decide otherwise. so if there has been an error there, please let me know as well.

don't stop believin'... hold onto that feelin'

Yippee yahoo for a new year. i am thankful for the last year of progress as well. even though it is now gone, i think we learned a lot of things about the upkeep of our little slice of the web. also, about not overdoing it when it comes to the challenge itself.

the chart should be back up and running as soon as humanly possible. as xCinx mentioned, it will have the slight variance of only being updated by the current month. that is to say, it will display the most current update of that month, and conclude when that month reaches its last update. then the new month will start immediately afterward. this will probably make more sense when it is actually up and running again. basically they updates for the month will be displayed until the end of the month by week. at the end of the month, they will be condensed down to one end of the month update.

we are seriously considering finding a way to have PS3 trophies to be tracked as well. there are several things really holding it back. mainly it comes down to a system, not unlike 360voice, that would allow us to follow user progress for the PS3 gamers at large. if/when we find a suitable candidate for the job, then we still have to find a way to compare them to achievements. i think it is fair to say, that there really is not a way to compare them evenly, so it may just be easier to track them as a separate unit, by giving them their on chart. before any of that can come to fruition though, we really need to have some sort of tracking method.

i am currently working on my completion percentage, to raise it up to at least 50% of the games i have played/owned. for the record, i am one step closer with recent completion of Silent Hill: Homecoming. once, i get there i may venture out to get new games. this may limit my purchases of new releases for a bit, but i think it will be worth it in the long run.

i also dabbled with the idea of doing a sort of "achievement review" in the last year. with my current quest to up my completion status, i will more than likely revisit that idea. however, in the future, the posts will definitely appear more brief, but contain a very similar structure. the reviews will pretty much consist of games that i have completed myself. not based on strategy guides, or what have you. pretty much to give people an idea of level of difficulty to gain achievements, as well as an "is it really worth my time" p.o.v.

i am sure at some point we will be running a challenge over at 360voice again, so we will update here when that goes into effect.

i will be working on the chart repair tomorrow, hopefully i will have it up again by the evening. until then.

New Year

Happy New Year, everyone!

Um...okay, so it's a few days past New Year's Day, but here we are. One year is over and we've decided to jump straight into the new challenge.

For the time time being, we'll still be using this blog. We are considering updating to a full functioning blog/website similar in style to the likes of 1Up and Kotaku. We want to branch out and help mature the community that seemed to grow over the last year.

In other event related news, we are discussing changing things up in a few different ways:

• First, instead of each individual member striving for 100K, we are looking to have gamers pledge x-number of achievement points for a more personal experience. Case in point, my 2010 challenge goal is going to be 50K. I figured that it's more reasonable since I only obtained roughly 12K last year.
• Second, we're trying to figure out a way to include Playstation 3 gamers and PS3 Trophies as well. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a tougher way of tracking since trophies have a different point value and structure than Achievements. Sorry, Wiibies, you don't even have a achievement/trophy type reward system.
  
• Finally, we lost the ability to properally track progress about half-way through the year last year. This year we'll be tracking progress simply on a month-to-month basis. It'll keep all of our charts cleaner and easier to read.

So, as of January 1st, we have started the new challenge. For those that don't know how to join, just send myself (XCinX) or MOtaku a message via Xbox Live that you are wanting to join. You'll need to join 360voice.com as well. They offer daily, weekly and monthly updates about achievements, making our job of tracking easier.

Again, thanks for stopping in and happy gaming!

-XCinX