Phil at Handsome Phantom lays out his thoughts on the possibility of a new achievement system.
These are the easy Achievement/Trophy Games for the week of April 29th - May 5th, 2024
Paul Hang: Every gamer knows how iconic that little sound effect is when you get an achievement. However, there are those that aren’t fans of it.
Seems like a bit of a non-issue to me. If you're not interested in achievements or trophies, either ignore them or just turn off the notification. At that point, they effectively cease to exist for you, but at the same time others can continue to enjoy them.
Yeah I never understood this argument either. It's not as if trophies and achievements are mandatory for a person to enjoy a game. If you want to be a hunter, great. If not, that's great too.
They killed cheat codes because devs don't want you to earn them too easily. Also some devs use a simple trophy/achievement as a reward rather than an actual satisfying in-game reward for collectible, which is just lame.
There are plenty of games that give you plenty of ingame rewards. What are you talking about? Look at Final Fantasy XV, or any of the AC games for 100% stuff in the games. They give you armor or other rewards.
and games like tony hawk remaster or uncharted prove that's on the developers, not the achievements
Nope.
If anything, it feels really bare now when you play on a platform without achievements (Switch) or with less focus on achievements (Steam).
Trophy and achievements are fun to unlock. Games that pop trophies and achievements just by making a burger jump is stupid. Games that rely on online to unlock trophies and achievements I stay away from. Games that have the next to near impossible trophies and achievements are a pain in the ass. Honestly if the game is fun I don't mind unlocking the trophies or achievements for it. I had fun getting the platinum trophy for Days Gone and Horizon also enjoyed getting the platinum for RE7 and RE8. Honestly I don't care either way I enjoy not getting trophies or achievements on my Switch, half the time in some games a trophy pops I don't care. I will only care if the game turns out to be fun and I am having a great time playing the game.
No.
Some people are OCD or at lease OCD when it comes to video games. For them, sure I guess. Maybe don't have need to get every ? and see every marker on a map and just play the game. If you live the game, sure, look at the achievements after and see if there is anything you're close to and go for it.
I think it can be depending on the person
having a lot of pokemon is great, but if you're a person who has a need to collect everyone, it's a nightmare
same with side quests, collectibles etc
just like anything it has it's benefits and drawbacks
Ubisoft Massive lead gameplay designer Fredrik Thylander, previously of DICE where he worked on Battlefield and Mirror's Edge, has spoken out about achievements and trophies, arguing that they "have been bad for gaming."
The achievements in Mirror's Edge opened my eyes to a whole other way of approaching the game. Since some of the toughest and most rewarding ones are basically whole levels turned into time trials with very strict time requirements, they force you to become much better at the game - in a way that difficulty levels just don't - and made me appreciate the mechanics that much more (especially the momentum-based running and platforming).
They actually made the game better for those like me who really enjoyed the game but wanted more of it, basically adding a new level of difficulty that took a long time to master/overcome. It added some extra longevity to a very short game.
He says "it eats resources that could have made the game better". I'm curious what he thinks the time he spent designing the achievements for the game would've been better spent on, because I expect bang for buck-wise achievements are a pretty efficient way of adding value to a game for the people who end up loving it.
I kinda see his point but I also see your point.
I've been trying to remember what games over the years have had their own trophies inside the game before trophies and such were a thing and all I can think of is the star ocean series
I think his point, though not elucidated upon because of Twitter limitations, is not that they can be bad but that they are used improperly to extend gameplay rather than reward actions.
Harvest Moon: Magical Melody on the GCN did.
In fact it actually built the game around it.
I am very OCD about playing games that I can platinum, in that sense I probably avoided playing games that I knew I would be unable to 100% complete.
I do think there are other people like me and also feel there should be an option for you to individually deactivate getting trophies on specific games, just so you play them and they do not go to your account.
I don't know. I used to think Achievements / Trophies were ruining games at first but then I saw the positive, if you totally love a game then they would offer you replay value by going after the last achievements to 100% the game. It made you explore every last bit of the game to achieve this and sometimes pushed you into areas or scenarios you probably might have missed.
It was a blast to get them on Oblivion / Skyrim, Fallout, Witcher, God of War, Elden Ring etc
Don't get me wrong, I do think there's achievements which are annoying, the ones where you need to find all collectibles which end up being missable AND are like trying to find a needle in a haystack are a kick to the balls, you know the majority of us are just going to use a guide to find them so what's the point.
Kind of a shame Nintendo haven't gotten a full system in place, they are so behind.
Nintendo seem to either be ahead of their time by years
or behind by 10 years
no in between
I enjoy having something to go for and feeling accomplished when doing something hard. I just hate it when achievements are based on things you can't really control. Like when something is for MP and the MP is just dead.
I used to be a hardcore achievement hunter back in the day, but I couldn't care less nowadays. I just want to play games the way I actually want to play them, and don't care to waste my time just to get a little pop-up.
I envy you sir. I just gotta have every single achievement whenever I play a game. On my Steam profile I have an 83% completion rate out of 35 games, and my OCD is telling me to keep upping that percentage higher.
Yeah. Back then, though I'm not sure what my actual completion rate was, I was mainly an Xbox player. I had close to 80k gamer score during the 360 days.
It just doesn't excite me anymore. I have less than 20% completion on my Steam account, though I have a pretty asinine amount of games there at the same time.
But I don't really bother with any of this anymore. If there's an interesting achievement I might aim for it just because I find it fun, but usually I just get that pop-up, say "cool" and continue with the game.
Never been a fan of achievements. I just want to play the game however it may present itself to me, there's an overflow of achievements to seek in real life lol
Great for those that enjoy them though, much respect to the platinum hunters, it ain't easy lol
I hate that you have to open an app to see the achievements, make it like the Xbox 360 fast and efficient.
Is this for PC as well?
Wow, I absolutely hate this idea. Does anyone actually want a fundamental change to achievements?
Achievements work fine as they are, and they've been pretty well refined since being a new concept at the 360's launch. I don't know how they can change it without just being needlessly convoluted. It shouldn't be too bad so long as they're strictly adding stuff and not removing... but if they botch it I'll likely be abandoning Xbox altogether and focusing on Playstation's trophies instead. I know they don't matter to most people but the only real reason I put up with the Xbone at all is that I still enjoy building up my gamerscore and have invested so much time in it already, I think it's still the best achievement system (compared to playstation, steam etc). I'd hate for them to squander that.
Awarding points for play time? Xbox already tracks play time, you can get a perfectly fine reading on someone's habits by looking over their profile, there's no need to butcher the achievements system for that. If you sink several hundred hours into a game the game itself must be rewarding enough.
One of the feature I liked about achievements is that you could use the picture as a background for your dash, I always wished developers made some of them better, like posters and artwork instead of a picture of a box with a x50 next to it. I like the star wars battlefront ones I use the boba fett pic. So yeah make achievement pics better especially rare ones so we can display them on our dash.