Achievements - The Good, The Bad, The Unreasonable

BrawlMan

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Castle Suprbeast just released a video on achievements you all should take a look at. Woolie or Pat more or less stopped caring about achievments years ago, but Woolie especially. It's especially sad when Woolie mentioned a person he knew would never play a game (one that he would enjoy or catered the genre he loves), if it would not net him the highest achievement score. I pity that kind of mentality and it's just sad. My question is: you got your achievements for a game you don't enjoy or is not catered to you, then what you smart ass? You're missing out some of the best part of gaming or things you personally enjoy, because it does not boast your achievement ego a little? Thank God, I was in a time where games were actually played to have fun or make your own self-imposed challenges.

 

Johnny Novgorod

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I have 49 Platinum trophies.
Like any other feature there's a good way and a bad way of implementing it.
When they incentivize exploration and experimentation - making the most out of the game, basically - I like them enough.
It's fine that higher difficulties and NG+ get their own as well, although ideally difficulty should stack.
And I generally hate single player games throwing in multiplayer trophies, especially when online requires paid service.
Because I have the service anyway I tolerate tutorial-level trophies for multiplayer. Win 10 matches in a row or something like that, I loathe.
Also anything that is essentially based in random luck to the point you'd have to organize a boosting session to get it.
That's my piece.
 

happyninja42

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I have 49 Platinum trophies.
Like any other feature there's a good way and a bad way of implementing it.
When they incentivize exploration and experimentation - making the most out of the game, basically - I like them enough.
It's fine that higher difficulties and NG+ get their own as well, although ideally difficulty should stack.
And I generally hate single player games throwing in multiplayer trophies, especially when online requires paid service.
Because I have the service anyway I tolerate tutorial-level trophies for multiplayer. Win 10 matches in a row or something like that, I loathe.
Also anything that is essentially based in random luck to the point you'd have to organize a boosting session to get it.
That's my piece.
Yeah on the subject of online achievements, I prefer the ones that are cooperative in nature, as opposed to competitive. Like say, something like boosting Reinhart with Ana's ultimate, while also having Lucio's buff on him at the same time. It's not required that you do anything with it, they just sort of give you a little nod of "hey, you just juiced up this guy a lot, he's probably going to smash a lot of faces. good job thinking about stacking buffs on him!"

Or ones like "revive an ally while they are on the capture point, preventing a capture from happening." That's fairly easy if you are doing a lot of CTF type matches, as all the action will be around the points anyway.

Cumulative ones I enjoy as well, as they show what you actually enjoy doing. Like "Grand Healer" or something like that, where you get it for healing a total 2 million health of allies over time. Or something like that. Disclaimer: None of those are real Overwatch achivements that I can recall, I'm just making up random examples. Haven't played OW in like 2 years now.

The other kind of multiplayer achievements I like are things in games like Payday 2, where it's something like "Dressed for Success" *All 4 members of the team wearing gear with minimal profile scores*
 

hanselthecaretaker

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The good:
Any game-specific, uniquely designed challenge that plays off of the game’s strengths in terms of some aspect of the gameplay design. Secret ones that pop as a result of the player’s curiosity by interacting with the world and/or its inhabitants are the best kind.

The bad:
Anything that would require boosting, insane top percentile level skill, or ludicrous amounts of time (like the MKX one where only people suffering from insanity wouldn’t just leave the console on overnight to rack up hours needed. MGS has some like this too I think. Also the online-required stuff should ideally have a separate set of in-game challenges so all normal trophies remain attainable if/when the servers get shut down.

The unreasonable:
Really would like to stop seeing all the “Kill x # of enemies with y weapon” ad-nauseam or any other redundantly uninspired task. Collectibles are ok if they are reasonable in quantity and aren’t so obscure you’d need a wiki to find them all sometime in this century.
 

CriticalGaming

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Yeah on the subject of online achievements, I prefer the ones that are cooperative in nature, as opposed to competitive. Like say, something like boosting Reinhart with Ana's ultimate, while also having Lucio's buff on him at the same time. It's not required that you do anything with it, they just sort of give you a little nod of "hey, you just juiced up this guy a lot, he's probably going to smash a lot of faces. good job thinking about stacking buffs on him!"

Or ones like "revive an ally while they are on the capture point, preventing a capture from happening." That's fairly easy if you are doing a lot of CTF type matches, as all the action will be around the points anyway.

Cumulative ones I enjoy as well, as they show what you actually enjoy doing. Like "Grand Healer" or something like that, where you get it for healing a total 2 million health of allies over time. Or something like that. Disclaimer: None of those are real Overwatch achivements that I can recall, I'm just making up random examples. Haven't played OW in like 2 years now.

The other kind of multiplayer achievements I like are things in games like Payday 2, where it's something like "Dressed for Success" *All 4 members of the team wearing gear with minimal profile scores*
Every Achievement you listed here would annoy me and get a hard pass from me.


Overwatch, TF2, and Payday as online only games get a little bit of a pass from me but only because they don't have any choice. But that means I would never touch them with a ten-foot pole.

To me online play has too much potential for interference to be viable for achievements. Unless you want to have in-game only achievements that don't affect your ability to get Platinum or gamer score. Things likein-game progress bar towards unlocking guns or skins or whatever.

But any game with offline and online components should never require online play for the Plat whatsoever, again due to tampering by other players (aim bots, hacking, etc) as well as the conditions of online pay on console being behind an additional paywall.


However if a game MUST have an online achievement it should only be for acknowledging the online multiplayer is there. Something modest like "play 10 online matches" is fine. online is never ideal but so long as it's something any player could achieve then it's passable enough.
 

CriticalGaming

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The good:
Any game-specific, uniquely designed challenge that plays off of the game’s strengths in terms of some aspect of the gameplay design. Secret ones that pop as a result of the player’s curiosity by interacting with the world and/or its inhabitants are the best kind.

The bad:
Anything that would require boosting, insane top percentile level skill, or ludicrous amounts of time (like the MKX one where only people suffering from insanity wouldn’t just leave the console on overnight to rack up hours needed. MGS has some like this too I think. Also the online-required stuff should ideally have a separate set of in-game challenges so all normal trophies remain attainable if/when the servers get shut down.

The unreasonable:
Really would like to stop seeing all the “Kill x # of enemies with y weapon” ad-nauseam or any other redundantly uninspired task. Collectibles are ok if they are reasonable in quantity and aren’t so obscure you’d need a wiki to find them all sometime in this century.
Did MKX have Ai fighting? Or what that only brought in for MK11?
 

happyninja42

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Every Achievement you listed here would annoy me and get a hard pass from me.
Really? Even the "Heal 1 million health" kind? Because those are fairly easy to earn if you are playing that class regularly. Like, in OW, I LOVE playing healer/support classes, Mercy is a particular favorite. So, an achievement like "heal X amount of total health overall" or heck, even "heal X amount of health in a single match" aren't really hard? If you are doing your job well, that will just happen. A good ultimate triggered when the enemy does a hard push, and you start healing everybody like crazy and pull it off (which happens as often as you getting crushed by the attack), that's the kind of thing that would earn you the achievement.

And ones like the Payday one I described where everyone dresses in low profile outfits, well, again, that kind is something that, if you are doing a stealth run of the heist, it's just expected that you "dress down" profile wise. To do otherwise is contrary to the stealth plan for that particular session.

So I'm not sure why those would be a problem, as they aren't really even something you have to work to hard at. They are sort of....would organic be the right word? Something that just sort of happens while you are doing your normal thing? I'm thinking organic isn't the right word for that kind of thing, but I'm drawing a blank on a better word. Incidental! there we go. They are just sort of incidental achievements. Which, there is an argument I guess that if they aren't a real challenge, why bother putting them in at all. And, fair enough I guess. But tons of achievements are mostly pointless by design, as far as I'm concerned.

To me online play has too much potential for interference to be viable for achievements. Unless you want to have in-game only achievements that don't affect your ability to get Platinum or gamer score. Things likein-game progress bar towards unlocking guns or skins or whatever.

However if a game MUST have an online achievement it should only be for acknowledging the online multiplayer is there. Something modest like "play 10 online matches" is fine. online is never ideal but so long as it's something any player could achieve then it's passable enough.
I guess you are mostly referring to competitive games? Like Call of Duty and the like? I guess I just miss out on the problem as I don't play those games at all, never have. But most of the online games I play, the achievements usually aren't the kind of thing that can be messed with by someone else. Granted, I avoid massive competitive games like the CoDs and Modern Warfare's like the plague, because I just don't like the atmosphere they engender in the player base. But like, hmm, maybe it's just that the online games I play these days are mostly coop ones, like PD 2. There isn't another player on the opposing team to troll you. Sure, your teammate might do it, but in my personal experience, most of them are cool to help you with an achievement if you say you are trying to get it.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Did MKX have Ai fighting? Or what that only brought in for MK11?
Not that I recall. You would’ve loved the tutorials in MKX. They included some stuff that makes what the AI fighters do with combos maxed out look manageable. That game was all about pressure and building meter, with crazy run cancels to extend juggle combos, block string vortexes, etc.

Yeah, they went in a more neutral direction with MK11 and the game was ultimately made more balanced and sensible as a result.
 
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