196: Building a Better Achievement

Hamster at Dawn

It's Hazard Time!
Mar 19, 2008
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They really need to stop with the "collect all the..." achievements, they're boring and often very time consuming. It's worst when developers just put collectibles in the game for the sake of it. At least in Gears of War 2 the collectibles actually give you some back story.

I should also mention multiplayer achievements. There are some good ones that reward you for fun things that are relatively easy to do. Then there are some that give you impossible tasks that you could only do with immense luck or by simply cheating. Halo 3 has good examples of both of those.
 

theeconomy

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Apr 6, 2009
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I really like the achievements that I got on accident. Like the saving private ryan achievement in COD WAW it was funny and I was trying to save him from the burning guy anyway. If there could be more like that I'd be happy. Oh and I second Hamster at Dawn's opinions.
 

The Random One

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May 29, 2008
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I never minded much about achievements. I like that they exist, but I won't do anything annoying for them unless it's something annoying that I really like doing. And I agree that there shouldn't be achievements for just progressing through the game, only for maybe finishing it or getting the "good" ending of a level. If they do, at least they should have interesting names - even though Call of Duty 4 had an achievement just for completing a level and for doing that above a difficulty level, at least they had interesting name, and I liked how the achievement for just completing the level had the playful punny tone of most achievements and the ones for completing it at a harder difficulty sound serious and foreboding. Much better than, say, Mirror's Edge "Chapter X Completion Thingy" achievements, which really fail at making me think I've achieved something.

Also, why so many punny names? I found it interesting how both The Orange Box and GTAIV had an achievement called "Under the Radar", one involving flying under things but no radars, and other involving radars but nothing about being under them.

Strange that no one mentioned Mass Effect, in which unlocking achievements actually has in-game effects (i.e., killing, um, a gazillion dudes with your shotgun for the Shotgun Mastery achievement allows you to start new characters with the Shotgun ability, etc.). It's something that could work well for some games (or, maybe not).

mym1nd said:
My favourite is in The Darkness. it is called Romantic and only get syou 10 points but is grea. You get to sit down with your girl if you wish and watch tv for a while. Now at anypoint you can get up, walk out, and blow people away. But if you stay there long enough for her to fall asleep on your lap...
I remember that in GameFAQs a guy actually did that for two hours, until the movie they were watching (To Kill a Mockingbird) ended, thinking that there was an achievement for that. I'm not sure there shouldn't be one.
 

Smokescreen

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Dec 6, 2007
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Clemenstation, thanks for the article link. Some interesting ideas and even counterpoints in that article.

But here's the thing about achievements; I don't give a fuck about them. They're nice to get, but I usually don't know that I'm getting them or how TO get them, so to actually accomplish them I need the internet (for the most part).

However, that's not my real complaint about achievements/trophies/whatever. My complaint is that if I get them, NOTHING HAPPENS.

If I get 3000 points on XBL, I'd like them to translate to something else. Let me buy a neat background, or interesting artwork, or even DLC. It doesn't have to be super awesome stuff, but having points doesn't mean jack unless I can use those points for something.

That said; when I can find certain challenges (the Akimbo Assassin from L4D comes to mind), those appeal to me so I give them a shot. I can still enjoy the game if I don't make it, but if I can then that's a bonus for me.
 

MowDownJoe

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Apr 8, 2009
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If an achievement teaches you about a feature in the game on your path to unlocking it, I would consider that a good achievement, myself. And if it isn't overly difficult.
 

HardRockSamurai

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May 28, 2008
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Mr. Burch, in all fairness I think this article is a bit dated. Most of the games you mentioned (i.e- Assassin's Creed, Gears of War, Two Worlds, etc) came from a period in time when achievements weren't taken into consideration by game developers. More and more, the importance of achievements is being realized. A good game becomes even better when it has good achievements (like, my personal favorite, for example, The Orange Box's achievements.)

I do agree with what you said about surprising achievements being better, but as long as gamefaqs.com exists, the chances of an achievement surprising you are slim. Personally, I feel that achievements should FORCE gamers into getting the most out of the game. Take GTA IV's achievements for example; while they do force you to go around the city killing hundreds of fucking pigeons, one can't argue that they didn't get the most out of the game because of it.

In other words, if you want that 1000 achievement points, the game should make you earn it!

PS- I'm a big fan of Hey Ashley, keep up the good work you guys.
 

Le Poet

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Feb 28, 2009
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My favorite was in The Orange Box where you play through the 'Ravenholm' level in Half Life 2 with just a gravity gun. Challenging, and it almost added another level to the game because it was so original and I never would have done it unless there was an achievement.
 

Lord_Jaroh

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Apr 24, 2007
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I'll just repeat what I posted in the Gamasutra article:

"I dunno, I like and dislike achievements as a player. I think they are a step in the right direction, but most definately aren't there yet. Yes, they pat you on the back for doing something "special", but other than that, they do nothing to really enhance your gaming experience.

I agree with oscar, I would like it more if they were tied to the game a little better. Jeff mentioned the grenade example in Uncharted. Well what if obtaining that achievement unlocked a more powerful grenade for use in the game? You've already achieved something difficult...reward the player for it. Achieved a headshot trophy? Narrow the target spot to make it easier for future use. You successfully collected 40 heads to earn the head-hunter trophy which are rare drops? Increase the drop rate then. Simply making them badges really does nothing, especially if those trophies are difficult to come by.

I also dislike the online achievements, although for a different reason. Forcing a player to play the game how you want to just to earn trophies is very silly, and it simply leads to people trying to break the system. Look at LittleBigPlanet and the trophy levels designed to net you 7 or so online trophies all at once. When achievements become more a chore and less like fun, well, that's where they break down.

Let a person play the game how they want. Let them unlock all trophies from single player or multi-player, and that way people can gain everything they want to out of the game and not feel "forced" to play in a way they dislike to "complete" the game. I think that's the main trick."

What the one poster above said, giving us a reason for the achievements/trophies would do wonders. How about allowing a number of redeemable DLC points? Or use in Playstation Home for gaining new items? Anything along those lines would make them infinitely more useful and the feel of reward would be far more tangible.
 

philo

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Apr 10, 2009
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Hopefully some of the posters here have played Free Radical's excellent Time Splitters series, which pioneered achievements well before Microsoft. Aside from the single player, there were numerous challenge missions, I think maybe as many as a hundred, that usually only required a few minutes to beat although you could earn bronze, silver, gold or platinum (platinum representing mastery of the challenge).

The challenges had a line or two of text that explained the goal, but this text in fact fleshed out an entire amusing meta-fiction about the single-player game. The challenges themselves often focused on a particular game mode or facet of gameplay.

This result was two-fold. The player unlocked new game modes, character models, and maps (the game modes were fastest to unlock, but it was actually very difficult to unlock all the character models and one multiplayer level). Secondly, by examing the games details, the player learned how best to build his own maps around game modes and gameplay (since Time Splitters games have map makers). The challenge missions were fun and really required some time to get gold or platinum scores.

My point is that Time Splitters games approach to achievements is to make them integral to the game. Time Splitters without achievements wouldn't be the same game. I think it's hard to say other games would be worse without their achievements.
 

gamma526

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Apr 11, 2009
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Has any one played the game achievement unlocked?
Its a flash game were you play as an elephant that collects Achievements.
This article reminded me of it.
 

Nivag the Owl

Owl of Hyper-Intelligence
Oct 29, 2008
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I make my own achievements. That way I can piss around as much as I want and still feel like I'm accomplishing something.
 

rated pg

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Aug 21, 2008
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I liked the article a lot, and there's 2 other examples of good achievements/bad achievements I'd like to point out.

Good achievements: Left 4 Dead. Most can be easily attained by regular gameplay (that is, the 4 player mode or Versus) and only a few require special action (like Akimbo Assassin). Some are quite challenging (like the no friendly fire one) but it just makes them that much better to show off.

Bad achievements: Team Fortress 2. The achievements in TF2 may, at the end of a long road, have some rewards but most of the irritating and oddly specific activities you have to do to earn them don't happen very often, which means resorting to farming achievements on a server for that or focusing on a few at a time. I particularly didn't like the Scout's and Pyro's achievements because some were just ludicrous.
 

redsoxfantom

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Jul 22, 2009
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My personal favorite achievement game is Call of Duty 4, where you had at least half of the points unlocked by the time you finished your first runthrough. Most of the remaining points could be acquired by doing a few simple tasks, like killing 3 enemies with the knife in a row.

However, there was also the fiendishly hard veteran mode to get through. Veteran mode, despite all of the blood, sweat, and tears (oh so many tears) that went into beating it, also offered the greatest sense of satisfaction I personally have ever experienced in a game when you heard that little "bleep-bloop" at the end of a level. And, yes, there were collectible laptops to get. But at least they offered something tangible other than the achievement, ie, unlockable cheats. The achievements in COD4 were the perfect mix of simple, difficult, and everything in between.
 

SpecklePattern

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May 5, 2010
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I think modern achiements are quite good in general. There SHOULD be very very difficult ones also. But I agree that the achiements are most fun when they inspire doing something a bit differently but still in a way that they could be done atleast during a couple try. Achievents need to be there for the plain gameplay but the harder or hardest one should not be removed. There are always hardcore achievers.

But the game cannot be held together with only achiements ;)
Flash Game: Achievement Unlocked [http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked]
 

lostforever

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Dec 8, 2009
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Grinding achievements? Equipping all characters with rank 40 items in Disgaea 2 took a long time...
 

ilion

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Aug 20, 2009
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An achievement was playing Revenge of the Shinobi with no shurikens and 9 lives. that was an achievement.
 

Skarecrow13

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Jan 19, 2011
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While playing Mass Effect 2 with my fiancee she noted that she loved the combat based achievements such as "incinerate the armor of 25 enemies" etc. It basically created a meta game inside the game trying to always have the right combo of powers to get the enemy types we would be coming up against, and then killing them with specific powers (which we probably would never have used otherwise). Once we got them all, we were disappointed that we could now not worry about it during battle anymore. That is a well designed achievement.
 

artstsym

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May 7, 2008
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I'd have to agree that the best achievements are the ones that challenge the player in ways that aren't intrinsic to the game, but certainly possible given its mechanics. For example, the Dastardly Achievement was a delightful surprise in Red Dead Redemption, and it made me want to continue the game long after the cheap thrill of dumping someone on the tracks would have by itself.