Rugrats - I Gotta Go Party

Official Topic Post for discussion about

Rugrats: I Gotta Go Party (Game Boy Advance)

Created 19 Dec, 2020 21:28 by MrOwnership

Set coded by Bearfax62
Game icon by Bearfax62
Achievement badges by Bearfax62
Box art by unknown


Rugrats - I Gotta Go Party (USA, Europe).gba
Rugrats - I Gotta Go Party (U) [!].gba
rugrats - i gotta go party (usa, europe).bin
RA Checksum: 9e7798abbd16a87548c380891accae28
CRC32 Checksum: DF167D1D

Resources:
GameFAQs
Longplay
Wikipedia

Claiming this.

I don't really know how rescores are supposed to be handled. The couple I turned into Quality Quest didn't really go anywhere, so I suppose I'll just post this here.


RESCORE PROPOSAL

Party Has Started (1)

-> (3) sole progress achievements, requires finding 3 babies and playing 3 games

Couch Potato (1)

-> (3) same as above

Swept Under the Rugrats House (1)

-> (3) same as above

In the Dilliard Room, With the Pacifier (1)

-> (3) same as above

Worldwide Day of Play (1)

-> (3) same as above

IN THE BATHROOM! (1)

-> (3) same as above

The Backyardigans (1)

-> (3) same as above

Are You Afraid of the Dark? (3)

-> (3) no change

Oh, Baby (10)

-> (25) equivalent to a full game no death clear

Baby Games (25)

-> (50) equivalent to a no damage boss rush, there's also an RNG factor which makes many runs impossible (I would rather see the total score requirement reduced to 90/100)

I'm Not Stu! (10)

-> (10) no change

Cookie Monster (3)

-> (4) very RNG-based

Braving the Worm (2)

-> (3)

Baby Driver (5)

-> (25) average lap time for 1st (which isn't easy) is around 40s, this requires 35s (I would rather see this changed to a 1st place finish)

Floor It (2)

-> (5) requires extreme button mashing using alternating buttons

Odd Thirty Out (5)

-> (5) no change

Not Bad Breaking (3)

-> (5)

It's All Coming Together (3)

-> (25) not even possible unless random pieces need almost no rotation (I would rather see this worth 5 points with the requirement reduced to 'with at least 10 seconds to spare')

Fastcard (5)

-> (5) no change

Back to Norman (5)

-> (25) seems insane (I would rather see this changed to only solving the puzzle, having 10s remaining wouldn't be too crazy)

Procrastination (5)

-> (10) so much luck involved (I would rather see the requirement reduced to not moving until the timer hits 30)

Rattle Me Bones (3)

-> (5) necessary for max points but very difficult

Cookies All The Way Down (10)

-> (10) no change

Welcome to the Hall of Fame! (1)

-> (3) incredibly easy but still worth more than 1 point

You Spin Me Right Round (10)

-> (10) no change

Cleaning House (5)

-> (5) no change

I Am The Milkman (3)

-> (3) no change but it should be noted that 53 is a perfect score

Working Overtime (5)

-> (10) you're only supposed to be able to make 10 pies, it's incredibly tight

Squiggly Maze Game (2)

-> (5) very RNG-based ('less than 10 seconds' would be better to match the max point requirement)

Portion Control (3)

-> (3) no change

Everything In Its Place (2)

-> (10) basically pixel perfect movement with either perfect memory or a picture (I would rather see this worth 5 points with the requirement reduced to less than half the given time, as in 23 seconds to spare)

Very Fast Doggo (5)

-> (5) no change

All Climbed Up! (5)

-> (5) no change but I think the achievement is broken

The Ride Never Ends (3)

-> (5) max points are given for a score of 12

TOTAL: 150 points -> 300 points

I'm turning the rescore into a revision. There aren't very many new achievements (written in bold). My initial goal was to have 2 achievements for each of the 24 minigames, one for getting 10/10 points and another (ideally) unrelated challenge; however, most of the minigames were just too simple to find additional challenges, so there were a lot of compromises in the set design because I didn't see the point of having two achievements if the first was automatically unlocked while achieving the second. I still tried to change several of the current achievements to reflect the maximum point requirements. This often meant decreasing the overall difficulty, so I'm designing leaderboards for around half of the minigames to compensate; it's only half because many of the minigames don't have enough score variation to warrant a leaderboard. Finally, I'm designing new badges for the entire achievement set, and there will be a gauntlet when the revision is nearing completion. Feel free to speak out against any part of the revision, be it the rescore values, the achievement changes, or any of the new achievements.

Party Has Started (1) -> change point value to 3, change name to "All Snacked Out"

Couch Potato (1) -> change point value to 3

Swept Under the Rugrats House (1) -> change point value to 3, change name to "One Strange Basement"

In the Dilliard Room, With the Pacifier (1) -> change point value to 3

Worldwide Day of Play (1) -> change point value to 3, change name to "Outdoor Fun"

IN THE BATHROOM! (1) -> change point value to 3, change name to "Bathtime's Over"

The Backyardigans (1) -> change point value to 3, change name to "Buried Treasures"

Are You Afraid of the Dark? (3) -> change name to "I'm Not Afraid of the Dark"

Oh, Baby (10) -> change point value to 25, change name to "Winner of the Baby Games"

Baby Games (25) -> reduce total score requirement to from 100 to 90, change name to "What a Baby's Gotta Do"

I'm Not Stu! (10) -> change name to "We Need Another Window", lower score requirement from 33 to 32 because level increases every 7 people, starting with 11 (theoretical 5th level would unlock after 32)

Cookie Monster (3) -> change point value to 5, raise score requirement from 40 to 45 (needed for 10pts)

Diabetic (3): Finish 'Angelica's Cookies' without catching any cookies or spiders.

Braving the Worm (2) -> change point value to 5, change name to "Dinner at the DeVille's", change requirement to catching 25 or more worms instead (because golden worms are worth 5x)

Reptar Cup (5): Get a 1st place finish in 'Reptar Racing'.

Baby Driver (3) -> change requirement to finishing a lap within ? seconds (I'll need to do some testing), change name to "I Gotta Go Fast"

Floor It (2) -> change point value to 5

Odd Thirty Out (5) -> no change

Not Bad Breaking (3) -> change point value to 10, change name to "More Blocks!"

They All Fall Down (2): Remove at least 8 blocks with one action in 'Breaking Blocks'.

I Gotta Try 'Em All (10): Solve each of the 6 puzzles in 'Which Piece Fits?'. (One Session)

It's All Coming Together (3) -> change point value to 5, change name to "Fast Fitter", lower requirement from 13 to 12 seconds remaining

Fastcard (5) -> change name to "A Memory for Faces"

Back to Norman (5) -> just reward puzzle completion (max points), remove "35 seconds remaining" time requirement

Procrastination (5) -> change point value to 10, raise requirement from 20 seconds to 22 seconds (half of 45)

Rattle Me Bones (3) -> change point value to 5, change name to "Bouncing Some Bones"

Cookies All The Way Down (10) -> change point value to 5, lower requirement from 110 to 99 (max points) but I might try to forbid the right half of the map, change name to "Follow the Cookies"

Welcome to the Hall of Fame! (1) -> change point value to 3, change name to "Seeing Through the Sleight"

You Spin Me Right Round (10) -> change name to "Spinning for Stars"

Cleaning House (5) -> change point value to 3, lower requirement from 25 to 20 (max points) but forbid mistakes, change name to "Everybody Do Their Share"

I Am The Milkman (3) -> change point value to 5, add "perfect score" to description, shorten name to "The Milkman"

Chuckie the Thrill-Seeker (3): Clear 'Reptar Rapids' in ? (I'll need to do some testing) seconds or less.

Working Overtime (5) -> change point value to 10

Squiggly Maze Game (2) -> change point value to 5, lower requirement from 8s to "less than 10 seconds" (max points), change name to "Shortest Path to Phil's Stomach"

Indulging Spike (5): Get a perfect score in 'Spike's Bowl'.

[u]Portion Control (3) -> change point value to 4, change name to "Spike's New Diet"

Everything In Its Place (2) -> change point value to 5, lower requirement from 30 to "23 seconds remaining" (half of 45), change name to "I Was Never Here"

Very Fast Doggo (5) -> change name to "Spike's Agility Training"

Baby Balancing Act (3): Score more than 90 in 'Vertically Challenged'.

All Climbed Up! (5) -> change point value to 10, change name to "A Well-Oiled Machine"

A Sensible Dog (3): Unearth at least 12 bones while digging fewer than 24 holes.

The Ride Never Ends (3) -> change point value to 4, raise requirement to 16 bones, change name to "One Track Mind"

OVERALL: 34 achievements worth 150 points -> 42 achievements worth 250 points

Thank you for getting this sorted out; unfortunately, after sponsoring it for vote, I received a notice from a DevCompliance member that it won't be able to pass because you have an active claim, and Jr. Devs can't claim more than one game at a time. I'd be glad to see you try again after your current claim is finished, though! But that being said, I do have some problems with the proposal in its current state, and especially since you're accepting criticism, I'd like to convey them, alongside what I liked:

First of all; I don't see the point of many of the changes to achievement names. A lot of them would just get more generic, with added Rugrats references seemingly being few and far between. Meanwhile, plenty of other references are removed. I can understand removing references that are pretty off topic from Rugrats, like "Not Bad Breaking" (Breaking Bad), "I Am The Milkman" (Psychonauts) and "Welcome to the Hall of Fame!" (Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum), but I also can't say I agree. But then there's the removal of references to Nickelodeon with "Worldwide Day of Play", "The Backyardigans" and "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" and removal of actual Rugrats references with "I'm Not Stu!" and "All Climbed Up!" which I don't agree with at all. It feels like making the set more generic for the sake of making it more generic. I do like some name changes though; "I Was Never Here" in particular stands out as pretty funny and fitting for its minigame.

Secondly, I'm not a fan of many of the changes to achievements, both points and requirement wise. I feel like you overrated the difficulty on many of them. "Procrastination" not only seeing a point increase but also a difficulty nerf makes me think you didn't realize the best strat for dealing with the minigame, because with the proper movement strat I honestly find the minigame to be a cakewalk, even with the start time restriction. Everything at 1 or 2 points seeing a buff feels like trying to give unnecessary reward for little work. Did "Welcome to the Hall of Fame!" need a point buff for simply beating it? Did every single room in Story Mode need a point buff, including the first one (which you can simply lose every minigame in to clear it considering you start with 4 lives)? I can understand giving "Floor It" a point buff considering it is genuinely hard without turbo, but considering turbo is allowed on RA I think it also gives unnecessary reward to players who don't abstain from using it. "Back to Norman" removing the time requirement is one thing, it's definitely one of the harder achievements, but I think not rescoring it in this instance overhyped the minigame a bit; just beating it shouldn't be a 5 pointer. I have issues with many of the other changes but I think I got my point across. Many of them feel like changes brought about from overhyping a minigame's difficulty, or in some cases, to just bring it closer to the game's own max point requirement. But again, I don't think they're all bad; I mentioned earlier I agree with doing one or the other on Back to Norman, either a point increase (although not to 25 as was initially proposed, I'd go 10 if it had to be buffed) or a difficulty nerf, but IMO the standout in this instance has to be "Cookie Monster", since I always thought I undershot the requirement for it a bit out of fear of making it too RNG dependent. I'm not big on increasing difficulty after the fact since it gives unnecessary advantage to people who got to the set earlier; but I'm willing to admit that's a me problem rather than a set in stone piece of developer philosophy. Realistically speaking, I agree with the change; it's something I always thought of doing but didn't want to commit to.

Lastly, on the point of the new achievements, "Baby Balancing Act" feels a bit unnecessary. Again, putting too much juice into one minigame, especially considering how easy it is to actually score over 90 points. "Reptar Cup", "Indulging Spike" and "I Gotta Try 'Em All" are more understandable considering they tread on less redundant ground, but I also think they're overscored for what are at their core "win the minigame" achievements. Aside from that, I think the new achievements are fine, and definitely my favorite part of the revision proposal. I like most of these ideas a lot and think they could add some extra value to the set.

I appreciate the attempt to improve upon this set but I think the bad outweighs the good for me. That being said, I'd be more than happy to see you try again after your current claim, preferably with some alterations. There are definitely some solid ideas here.

EDIT: I also received a message that ordinary developers aren't allowed to sponsor Jr. Dev plans. You'll need to handle this with a code reviewer next time. My apologies I couldn't do more for you.

Yeah, there was a miscommunication on Discord. I asked for permission to post another revision plan. I was given the okay, but it turned out that they assumed I was talking about revising the set I had already submitted for review a couple of weeks ago. By the time I realized the mistake, it had already been a good 6 hours since I asked you to sponsor the revision. I thought that it was too late, but I see now that I should have contacted you again regardless.

As for your comments, regarding the new names, I already designed new badges for most of the set, (after getting yelled at for the leaderboards, I was reluctant to work with any achievement logic until there was an official revision in progress) so for a lot of the achievements, I just wrote down a name that seemed to go with its new badge. Most of the name changes aren't that important and could easily be dropped if you think the original names are better for the set. In truth, I hadn't even realized so many of the achievement names were referencing things unrelated to Rugrats. I would have liked to include more references to the actual show, but my memory just isn't that great; it's been over two decades since I last watched an episode. Regardless, I do think that an achievement name should at least reference the achievement in question. "Welcome to the Hall of Fame" in particular has absolutely nothing to do with Angelica practicing magic tricks.

I kind of like having all of the standard progression achievements be at 3 points, considering that each of them is awarded after you find 3 babies and play 3 minigames, but I suppose everything else is up for debate. The overall achievement set was definitely underscored, but I admit that correctly assigning values between 1-5 points is certainly a lot harder than deciding between 5, 10, and 25 points. I was somewhat reluctant to have anything be worth 1 point, as that seems to be reserved for things that require no effort at all. I'm fine with "Procrastination" staying at 5 points, but I wouldn't really say that I decreased the difficulty; the 2 seconds reduction was suggested to improve the design of the achievement (not moving until half of the allotted time has expired just sounds better than randomly deciding on 20 seconds). Many of the other point increases feel a little more justified because a lot of the achievements are rewarding you for overcoming challenges set forth by the game's developers (i.e. acquiring 10/10 points). Challenges that actually have significance within the game should probably be given a greater point value than the more arbitrary ones that are created by achievement developers, even when the difficulty is more or less comparable. That's why I made incredibly easy achievements like the one for 'Where's Cynthia Gone?' worth 3 points and some others that will take a handful of tries worth 5 points. As a final note regarding difficulty and scoring, it seems possible that you're overestimating the skills of the average player; just because something is incredibly simple for some of the more hardcore players on RA doesn't mean that it will be equally simple for a more casual gamer (technically, I'm neither, or maybe both).

Regarding your primary complaint with the new achievements, I agree that "Baby Balancing Act" is not ideal. It was a remnant of my initial plan to have two achievements for every minigame, this being the one that rewarded earning 10/10 points. I scrapped all of the other redundant achievement ideas, but I left this one because I liked both the name and the badge. I also wanted there to be something more accessible since the other achievement for "Vertically Challenged" is one of the hardest challenges in the set. That being said, it could probably be cut, but I do wish there was an alternative.

As for your comments, regarding the new names, I already designed new badges for most of the set, (after getting yelled at for the leaderboards, I was reluctant to work with any achievement logic until there was an official revision in progress) so for a lot of the achievements, I just wrote down a name that seemed to go with its new badge.
Ahhh, that makes sense. In general, when making new badges I'd suggest not making them with new names in mind, since unnecessary overhauls like that are generally fairly difficult to get through revision voting. But hopefully most if not all of them wouldn't be too jarring alongside the normal names. Alternatively, you could try to get the badges through the icon gauntlet, and then look for advice on which ones would warrant name changes; I'm sure with the added context of what the new badges are supposed to look like, I and the other voters could be convinced on some of them getting new names.

Regardless, I do think that an achievement name should at least reference the achievement in question. "Welcome to the Hall of Fame" in particular has absolutely nothing to do with Angelica practicing magic tricks.
That's understandable. I get why a deep cut based on the association of the name Cynthia doesn't really work for someone who doesn't understand the reference. I think there's a fine line when it comes to making references make sense to people who aren't in on the joke, so if you wanted to change that one I'd be cool with that.

I'm fine with "Procrastination" staying at 5 points, but I wouldn't really say that I decreased the difficulty; the 2 seconds reduction was suggested to improve the design of the achievement (not moving until half of the allotted time has expired just sounds better than randomly deciding on 20 seconds).
I see where you're coming from, but minor of a decrease as it is, it is still a decrease. Besides, 20 is a pretty round number, it's not like it came out of completely nowhere. I picked a lot of the required times for achievements such as Procrastination, Everything In Its Place, It's All Coming Together and so on based on what I considered a fair challenge for their respective minigames, making things as tight as possible without being downright unfair. Whether or not I succeeded at that is up for debate, but I don't think I agree on changing the numbers just so they're more directly related to the minigame's length.

Challenges that actually have significance within the game should probably be given a greater point value than the more arbitrary ones that are created by achievement developers, even when the difficulty is more or less comparable.
I can't say I agree. Taking, for example, challenge achievements in a Pokemon set, I think it only makes sense that an achievement telling you to beat a gym leader in set mode with no items and a level cap should definitely be more points than an achievement for beating that same gym leader with no restrictions. Significance to the game is important, I agree, but I think there's a limit to that. At the end of the day, you're still experiencing Where's Angelica Gone? by playing through the story mode, even if you don't have to beat it there, and you also have to beat it for Oh, Baby. Welcome to the Hall of Fame! wasn't added to give that minigame special treatment, it was added so it wouldn't be the only minigame lacking an achievement.

As a final note regarding difficulty and scoring, it seems possible that you're overestimating the skills of the average player; just because something is incredibly simple for some of the more hardcore players on RA doesn't mean that it will be equally simple for a more casual gamer (technically, I'm neither, or maybe both).
That's definitely a possibility. I do think the set's points could be increased a fair bit, just not to the level you've suggested. I don't think it's too controversial to say this game is very easy on a casual playthrough, and the achievement set only does so much to add challenge. I do acknowledge the lack of masteries this set has received, but I believe that to be less because the set is overwhelmingly difficult by the standards of the site and more because the set is more difficult than one would expect or want to push through for a licensed party game on GBA. But I think the difficulty, as it is, makes for a compelling experience if you do decide to push through it. At the end of the day, this stuff is pretty subjective, and I definitely don't deny the fact that my reasonably above casual (although I wouldn't say I'm a pro) skill level plays a role in my opinion. But I think whether or not something is doable for a casual player shouldn't have to play a role in whether something should make it into an achievement set. Both casual and hardcore players are on this site, and inbetween giving the former camp easy masteries and the latter camp an exciting challenge, I'm always going to prioritize the latter, not out of any kind of elitism, but just because I don't think making mastery difficult is completely depriving the former of fun. Besides, what's the point of a "mastery" if you don't have to work for it?

Everything else I don't really have much to add to, your positions are overall understandable. Thanks for willing to have open discussion surrounding my critiques.