Quite simply, the goal of the LifePoints system is to get you to go out and to things. Whether its risque, dignified or illegal, these actions typically require excess effort beyond what you normally perform in everyday life. They're meant to have you DO things that you wouldn't noramally do, or in a way you wouldn't normally do it; to live life, essentially.
Allowing retroactive achievements, while certainly helping in the nostalgia factor, doesn't do much to help with this. While it is nice to look back on something you've done before with a sense of accomplishment, and it can certainly seem daunting to be asked to complete a "Hard" or higher difficulty achievement a second time, My argument is that it maintains the integrity of the system's original purpose, and that's to get out there and live. Have you had sex with a bride within one week of her wedding day? Impressive, but this is your chance to get out there and do it again, only this time, on purpose.
Does that make you a worse person? I don't think so.
I only disagree for some of the very specific ones.
ReplyDeleteFor example, one of them requires you to go to the top of four specific monuments, one of which is the Eiffel Tower. I've already done that. It's around $150 for a ticket, and while it was nice, it's not something I was overly excited about. So it's not really worth it to spend that much money and time re-doing something just to say it happened after you made a post about it.
BUT, if it just said "top of four monuments" or something, I'd be okay with it. That means we could actually use this as a push to go see new monuments, and travel to places we actually care about. I could decide to climb Machu Picchu, or scale a pyramid, or get to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
[For example, the "Read 60 Books" one: It doesn't make me re-read specific ones I've already read, I get to pick and experience new ones. "Visit another country" lets me go anywhere, it doesn't force a re-visit of Canada.]
If the point of this is to get people to get out and do something new, I don't think forcing do-over's is the best way to do it, especially for things someone might not really care about doing again.
But for the most part, even though I've already completed a ton of them, I'm okay with having to re-do achievements since they can be done in new ways.
If there's a way to fix the specifically-named ones, then I agree with all your reasons.
I'm considering selective retroactivity, and that's something I should have outlined in the initial post. Basically, things Very Hard or above, or some such like that end up being retroactive, OR, certain achievements that require an inordinate amount of time (For example, be in a relationship for 5 years -- I wouldn't make you start counting from today, I'd count past years), or can only be completed once (get your driver's licence, motorcycle licence etc.), or like you said, include objectives normally out of reach excepting a handful of opportunities, like taking a $150 ticket to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
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