Your thoughts on trophies/achievements/ or in game achievements

[madzero5]

OMG!!!!!! wow just wow this is definitely the best achievement/trophy ever made just read this

http://www.destructoid.com/gearbox-details-late-fan-s-inclusion-in-borderlands-2-235110.phtml

[Cain]

definitely something to boost motivation

[CRCGamer]

I'm perfectly fine with trophies... as long as they are within reason. If it is something you can reasonably achieve within around five hundred hours of game play combined. Whatever, that makes it something I can reasonably achieve on first play through or one of the next half dozen play sessions throughout the year. If its one of those crazy ones that literally will take near continuous weeks to months of game play? Not so fine, at that point its only for the diehard gotta chase the numbers types.

I personal motto with games is the "All in fun." If it goes too far past what somebody can reasonably expect to being a hard boring grind against the number counter, it ceases being fun and becomes a chore. An example would be some of those Gears of War achievements the XBox-360 players have.

[Minkseru]

Example of a good achievement system.

Guild Wars Hall of Monuments. (will link in a bit)

you can place notable achievements here, heros with new armors, your characters with different armors, and the like. Then in the release of Guild Wars2 were given transmutaion stones to change the appearance of your weapons, pets to be charmed by your ranger, with a normal version of the pet in game.

[razor09]

i actually enjoy reviving trophies

[madORyung]

having them in games makes me wanna keep playing till i get them all

[Legado]

I like games that have achievements like Star Ocean 3. Where you have to beat the bosses with in a minute or less without getting hit. Achievements really make games more fun and challeging.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Legado

[AngeliccReaper]

Trophies and acheivemts are the only thing play most games more than once

[† Emotional Outlet]

Speaking of playing games more than once, what do you guys think about games that never end? Like Minecraft or (theoretically) Terraria? The Sims? (Is SimCity an endless game? I feel like it is, but I've never gotten far enough--I'm a terrible urban planner.) All those long term achievements like "Kill 50,000,000 slimes" would be better placed in those games where you could potentially kill a bunch of slimes just for sheer longevity of gameplay. Does that make them more justifiable, though?

And if achievements/trophies are the only thing that brings you back into a game, is it really a good thing? Chrono Trigger doesn't have achievements (unless you count the multiple endings), but I've played it well over a dozen times in my lifetime. And even if you did count the multiple endings, does it feel more or less like you achieved something if you got a trophy for it? Do you feel more fulfilled getting a trophy than not?

It feels kind of lame to me to get a trophy/achievement for finding a secret and that's all it did. No bonus content, no extra levels. Just "Congrats for finding this smily face carved into the wall on this precipice that took 45 minutes to jump onto because you can't see your feet and there's no real reason for you to be up here except to see a smily face that you probably know about because you read it online!"

[darkness]

I definitely consider myself a trophy hunter. So trophies are a must. They add more value to the game if done correctly.

[madzero5]

Speaking of playing games more than once, what do you guys think about games that never end? Like Minecraft or (theoretically) Terraria? The Sims? (Is SimCity an endless game? I feel like it is, but I've never gotten far enough--I'm a terrible urban planner.) All those long term achievements like "Kill 50,000,000 slimes" would be better placed in those games where you could potentially kill a bunch of slimes just for sheer longevity of gameplay. Does that make them more justifiable, though?

And if achievements/trophies are the only thing that brings you back into a game, is it really a good thing? Chrono Trigger doesn't have achievements (unless you count the multiple endings), but I've played it well over a dozen times in my lifetime. And even if you did count the multiple endings, does it feel more or less like you achieved something if you got a trophy for it? Do you feel more fulfilled getting a trophy than not?

It feels kind of lame to me to get a trophy/achievement for finding a secret and that's all it did. No bonus content, no extra levels. Just "Congrats for finding this smily face carved into the wall on this precipice that took 45 minutes to jump onto because you can't see your feet and there's no real reason for you to be up here except to see a smily face that you probably know about because you read it online!"

games airn't as good as they used to be maybe its because i'm just loseing interest in games that i don't know

[Dark_Angel13]

MC is certainly an endless game but no I don't think it's justifiable to give a game like it a mass kill trophy like that, MC is mostly about building stuff not killing enemies so that would be a rather annoying trophy.

Lol I don't much like the secret achievement trophies either when they're like that, I don't mind it when it's find all secrets in game, then there's at least a sort of sense of achievement because ALLL of them is much harder then one.

[† Emotional Outlet]

I don't know if I like the idea of trophies/achievements at all in an endless game. If anything, I think it does more harm than good because if you feel a sense of completion when you get trophies, that's going to severely hamper how "endless" the game actually feels. You get all the trophies and you feel like you've done everything in the game. What more is there to experience? What impetus have you to continue playing if receiving trophies is the only reason you kept playing the game in the first place? It almost feels like a waste.

games airn't as good as they used to be maybe its because i'm just loseing interest in games that i don't know

Is that true, though, that games aren't as good as they used to be? Or is it just nostalgia goggles? People tend to view the past as some magical time where everything was great--which isn't to say I don't mourn the dying of turn-based RPGs (because I totally do, but I realise lots of people think they're boring as hell).

Gaming is far more mainstream and accessible than it used to be. I don't think anything has really changed though--we just see all the terrible stuff we hate about gaming magnified about a thousand times because it's become as ubiquitous as it has now. Not to mention that if you've been exposed to games since you were young, you probably weren't as involved in the gaming industry as you are now and, depending on when you were a tiny tot, you probably didn't see that a lot of early games were repetitive, exceedingly difficult, and had paper-thin plots and characters. Kind of like how it is now, depending on how much of a sourpuss you are, haha.

If you don't read Cracked with terrifying regularity, one of my favourite columnists, David Wong, wrote an awesome article here called "5 Ways to Tell You're Getting Too Old for Video Games" a while back. Maybe you'll find something you can relate to there. And he's got a bunch of other gaming articles you might be interested in reading. Not that I'm a fangirl of his or anything, but I am.

[Zanco]

I honestly love acheivements, and I say this because after you beat a game with no actual replay value then what are you gonna do with it? I mean you just payed sixty damn dollars for the game, might as well milk that shit dry.

games airn't as good as they used to be maybe its because i'm just loseing interest in games that i don't know

As for games being worse, then of course I have to dissagree. Mordern games are great, they're so much better. I mean I LOVE my NES and I play Bomber Man on it like every week, but compare that shit to Binding of Issacc or League of Legends it won't stand a fighting chance. For the most part you have to be optamistic and branch out from what you usually play. With most mainstreem games being Action/Adventure or Shooters, most people don't know about the 50 other good games that are coming out with them in the same month. Hell, the best games aren't even telivised or commercially announced. They're just there to be there, and they're good.

Another thing is that you can't limit yourself to a single consol or even consol gaming in general, if you branch out and stop listening to what other people say you might find things you actually like. I used to think the Xbox was the best thing in the world, but now it doesn't really matter because I realized that all consols have good games and it doesn't matter what the game is. Branch out, find some thing of intrest, and enjoy the FUCK outta that shit, because games will never be bad as long as there's people to play them.

Edited October 11, 2012 by Zanco

[Dark_Angel13]

Some games are really bad lol and yet I play them for laughs lol. I'm with Zanc on disagreeing that new games are bad, some of the best games I've ever played have come out just recently, Skyrim being one of them. I still love my n64 to death though so really for me it's any game I wanna play I play...They never had trophies on their games but I've played the fuck out of them and finished them all like 60 times and I still keep playing them cause they're fun.

It's all about entertainment and enjoyment, if new games arent doing it for you then go back and play some old ones and as Zanc said, there are A LOT of games that never get announced and get missed by a lot of people, some real gems too

[Minkseru]

Fire Emblem was a vastly enjoyable game, and sadly the oldest of the group is only in Japanese, but point still being there are a ton of great games out now. If you think games are not as good, maybe you should try a different genre of games?

[Dark_Angel13]

Agree with Mink, you should try a different genre, maybe try out some indie games too or some older ones that came out even a few years ago, there's a lot of good games out there

[Vigilence]

I would like it if achievements gave the players points they could spend on in-game things that are exclusive to achievements. Stuff like armor, items, art, music etc.

Now that would keep me coming back for more.

[AurionEmblem]

At the outset (as I perceived it) of achievements, I was supportive. I thought they were cool, an additional reward for doing things you wouldn't normally have done in a game. But now, some games give you achievements for reaching certain points in the main story of a game. Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing? Why am I being rewarded for the simple act of playing the game the way it should have been designed? If a racing game had an achievement for going through an entire course without touching the side rails/going off the paved path/etc., that could be difficult and having an achievement would reward people for doing that. Conversely, having an achievement for finishing a grand prix, that seems like normal gameplay to me and shouldn't have an achievement.

And old games had a way of rewarding players for doing crazy things like this. In Sonic Adventure 2 for Dreamcast, in out of the way, hard to reach places on some of the stages, you could find Big the Cat, paying tribute to the first Sonic Adventure. It was a cool thing that not everyone knew about (mostly because most of these were removed from the Gamecube release). If that was a modern game, you better believe there would be an achievement for finding Big. Does that mean it is a bad thing? No, though it would the secret nature of it all. My point is, people would try to find these things, without having the incentive of an achievement.

Since Fire Emblem was mentioned, take Fire Emblem 7 (released in the west as simply Fire Emblem for GBA), in some stages, a strong enemy who negates magic appears. You want to try to defeat them, because of the challenge posed to you. Playing normally, you wouldn't be able to, but if you prepare for the challenge and beat the strong enemy enough times, you get some additional backstory on the main antagonist of the game. This rewards players for accomplishing a difficult task. There is no achievement trophy that you get for doing this, yet it was still something I tried to do on every playthrough once a friend mentioned it to me.

Maybe I have some retro goggles on. Achievements are certainly popular in gaming nowadays and are unlikely to go away anytime soon. But I at least prefer the subtlety of years past, where getting 100% got you a cool screen at the end of the credits and some simple satisfaction to the blatant "spend all your time playing this game so you can show off your platinum status" complete with mass-produced moments of satisfaction for each stepping stone which devalue their collective worth.

[† Emotional Outlet]

I don't know how far back you're looking, but it's possible people were considering achievements, but there may not have even been enough room for such a system. Or so I suspect anyway--I don't have any idea how tightly they packed those SNES and Atari cartridges. And, again, depending on how far back you're looking or what games you're looking at, a lot of older games didn't have a lot of depth to them (or it was All There In The Manual) so you didn't really have any real impetus to dig deep--so you end up with ridiculous easter eggs that don't come to light until years later.

I mean, I can understand having achievements and trophies, lame as they are, for completing parts of a storyline or doing things that seem like regular gameplay--like winning your first race in a racing game. People like having landmarks and checking on their progress--I spend probably as much time playing a game as I do looking at the stats page for my playthroughs, haha. And it's why people like to weigh themselves every day, even though doing so can be detrimental. I don't know if it's necessarily a product of the "participant trophies/ribbons are totally legit" mindset, but maybe it is.