Are achievements a good thing for games?

[Elfgore]

I don't exactly mind them. In fact for a couple games I try to get as many as I can.

Though there are a lot of games that just hand out achievements for clicking the start button. Crysis 2 and Terminator: Salvation I'm looking at you. Then you get games like The Last of Us that actually make you work for achievements. I also blame them for ruining cheating in console games.

 

[Ancient Mariner]

I find achievements quite enticing and in many cases they are what result in me going back through older titles. I went through Metro 2033 on one of the ranger modes for a related achievement and ended up having one of the best gaming experiences in my recent memory. The lethality of the combat was greatly heightened, and coupled with the terrific setting, it made for one of my favourite games of this last generation. In cases such as the aforementioned one achievements are a good thing as they get you to experience more of what the game has to offer. Where I have a problem however, is when they are multiplayer based. In the (in my opinion) highly underrated Bioshock 2 I was recently doing a hard play through for achievements.(I also love the game so another replay now and again is always fun) However I am pretty annoyed with the fact that there are some achievements for the game I will realistically never attain. I don't have xbox live so a large portion of the achievements are immediately out of the question. Logistically speaking I am probably in the minority of xbox users without live so the developers don't really care nor do I completely expect them to, but it's still bothersome. The multiplayer DLC based achievements for Bioshock 2 are especially bad. One of them requires you to play and win a match on all of the DLC maps. This in and of itself is not inherently bad, but as the game is a few years old the online is practically dead and out of the select few who play regularly only a portion of those may have the new maps. This effectively makes getting the achievement impossible.

Despite some of the flaws I mentioned I still really enjoy them overall.

 

[King Billi]

I like them personally although I couldn't say that they are really "a good thing" for gaming though they certainly aren't a bad thing either.

It used to be they were a good indication of which games I really enjoyed more than others as I would try harder to platinum those games though that isn't really the case anymore as I have a fair few platinum trophies for games I don't really like but were just too easy to get(Star Trek is a good example)

Basically if I think here is a decent chance I could get a particular trophy then I'll likely go for it, I like having extra incentives when I'm replaying a game even if they are ultimately meaningless. I've never played a game JUST to get the trophies.

 

[FPLOON]

Eh... It REALLY depends on if you can "achieve" them in single player or multiplayer... If it's multiplayer, those kind can go fuck themselves[footnote]No offense to those that personally like those kind of achievements[/footnote] especially if they involve being online in some way, shape, or form... Then again, achievements are just another way for those playing the game a means to challenge their skills one way or another, so there's that...

Overall, they only bother me if they're based on chance/luck[footnote]Fuck you, that one achievement in Lollipop Chainsaw![/footnote] or involve multiplayer/online in some way... They're good to a point, but a game is NOT as good as it's achievements lead you to believe... (No matter what...)

Moral of my post: Achievements should be an afterthought to the overall experience of the game itself...

 

[st0pnsw0p]

It's a completely harmless thing for gaming. If you don't like them, just turn off notifications and you can ignore them forever. If you like them, don't do that. Personally, I don't care either way. If I get one, that's cool, but I'm probably not going to go back and try to get all of them because I don't replay games very often.

 

[Isra]

Fortunately I haven't run in to any examples where achievements affect the gameplay in any way. I can just ignore them. They're not really achievements so I have never wasted my time trying to complete them at the expense of just having fun playing. Just my opinion but I've always found achievement systems to be completely redundant. Who's actually keeping track?

If they started to become the primary reasons to play and actual self aware goals within the context of the game, yeah I'd say they aren't healthy for gaming. But that hasn't been the case so far at least in my experience, they've always been secondary to the gameplay, like collectors cards or something.

 

[WeepingAngels]

It's a completely harmless thing for gaming. If you don't like them, just turn off notifications and you can ignore them forever. If you like them, don't do that. Personally, I don't care either way. If I get one, that's cool, but I'm probably not going to go back and try to get all of them because I don't replay games very often.

Does turning off notifications unlock save files that are locked to protect Achievement integrity?

No, they aren't completely harmless.

 

[Signa]

Some are good, but I think most are bad. I enjoyed some of the challenges Plants Vs Zombies gave me, but some are so stupid that it means playing an entire game over if you do one thing wrong. Overall, they are a net loss for gaming, because of the other issues that come about from them.

 

[TheRiddler]

I think that achievements are at their best when they pop up as a result of a little spontaneous action taken by the player. I mean, I'm thinking of "Irony" from Bioshock, where you...

[spoiler/]... take a picture of the body of Sander Cohen's corpse after he manipulated you into killing and photographing his former proteges.[/spoiler]

Never are you really told that this is an option, but if you have a clever idea, you're recognized for it. And this is the achievement at it's best, in my opinion.

Extra Credits had an episode on achievements, too.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I think they are a bad thing personally that trivialities the whole gaming experience. I find them annoying quite frankly and I feel they actually take away from the game in most cases, here have 5 points because you turned on the game er great its just a pathetic and empty system designed to hook people in to something that has no relevance.

Its a crutch which gaming dosent need well not the gaming we are talking about other games need crutches because they offer nothing otherwise i.e gamblers.

 

[AngloDoom]

I personally quite like them. If they're stupid ones such as 'Pass the tutorial' then I don't take much notice of them, but if I'm dicking about on a game seeing what I get away with, and then an achievement pops up saying 'Slew the Hydra with a dinner-fork' when I had no idea such an achievement exists, it makes me grin.

My friend intentionally tries to get every achievement on every game he owns and - while it's not my cup of tea - it adds so many extra hours on enjoyment for him.

Achievements have never gotten in the way of my gaming experience but - on occasion - add to it. Seems wholly positive to me.

Does turning off notifications unlock save files that are locked to protect Achievement integrity?

No, they aren't completely harmless.

I actually don't understand what you mean. Could you elaborate for me, out of interest?

 

[kyuzo3567]

I miss cheats... We don't have cheats/gamesharks available anymore because of achievements. I still play my PS1/2 so much because of being able to use cheats to blow through games having fun without worrying about doing everything correctly to get through the game...


Seriously, I've never had more fun creatively than using a gameshark to completely design and personalize my character in Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS1

 

[Bocaj2000]

Maybe this is just me, but I find achievements/trophies tend to break immersion. God of War is a particularly big offender, since you run around as an angry, somewhat serious man doing angry, gritty things, and then a silly pun comes up after you beat a boss. I know that's happened elsewhere, too, where I get absorbed into something and then suddenly a little notification reminds me I'm playing a game. Personally I wish there was a switch to turn them off and on at my leisure.

agreed. I have yet to play a game in witch the achievements added to the game instead of taking away. Most of the time they are unlocked by simply playing through the campaign, making a binary decision, or finding a not-so-secret secret. They make my personal discoveries feel less unique and even dictate how some people play the game. It has done nothing but harm for interactive media and has yet to be used properly.

 

[Piorn]

They are usually 4 categories
-play the story
-do X amount of Y (usually achieved during the story)
-play the game on hardest difficulty in 1h without getting hit once or some other overly hard bullshit I can't be arsed
-do this obscure thing

The only one that has I'm even remotely interested in is 4.
The first two are just lazy and the 3rd would just be unreasonably frustrating.

 

[CelestDaer]

I miss cheats... We don't have cheats/gamesharks available anymore because of achievements. I still play my PS1/2 so much because of being able to use cheats to blow through games having fun without worrying about doing everything correctly to get through the game...


Seriously, I've never had more fun creatively than using a gameshark to completely design and personalize my character in Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS1

Seconded, and because of the new mindset that cheating through a single player game is a bad thing, you can't get cheat codes for old games anywhere. I've been looking for worthwhile codes for Digital Devil Saga 2 basically since I beat it a year and a half ago... and all the codes I do find are from the wrong version...

 

[Zipa]

It depends on the game, in some it can add an aspect of playability like in Dishonored I went back and did a ghost play through to get the achievement. In other games like Beyond Two Souls you literally get an achievement for pressing a button on your controller, these achievements are just well silly as Graham Stark put it.

 

[putowtin]

Depends, if it's one for just playing the game then no, but I'd never played any character class beside soldier on Mass Effect then saw the acheivements that were linked to the engineer and biotic classes and decided I had to have a go... changed my life forever!

I don't care about achievements... they seem completely pointless to me.
Now, give me an actual PRIZE for collecting achievements, and then it'd be completely different.

If achievements gave me points I could eventually spend on PSN stuff, I would care a lot about achievements. But as they stand now, I don't even check my games'achievements list.

Fable 3's achievements unlocked avatar items on xbox live.... shame the game sucked!

 

[Korenith]

Maybe this is just me, but I find achievements/trophies tend to break immersion. God of War is a particularly big offender, since you run around as an angry, somewhat serious man doing angry, gritty things, and then a silly pun comes up after you beat a boss. I know that's happened elsewhere, too, where I get absorbed into something and then suddenly a little notification reminds me I'm playing a game. Personally I wish there was a switch to turn them off and on at my leisure.

Is there not a way to turn the notifications off in the settings? There is on PS3 so I'd assume other systems would do the same. It still tracks what you've done but it doesn't tell you mid-game.

OT: I enjoy the trophy/achievement system because I get a feeling of accomplishment out of getting 100% but some games use it better than others. The "Irony" trophy from Bioshock is still my favourite because it was just clever but there are a few really difficult ones I'm quite proud of having. Other games just include random grind trophies which are awful. I'm looking at you Mortal Kombat.

Edit: Oh and the collectible do-dad obsession is getting bad now. I can't remember the last game I played that didn't have them and a lot of devs need to read the Critical Miss strip on the subject so that I'd like to see change.

 

[DanielBrown]

I think they're great for replayability and I love getting them, but they're also fucking awful since I'm sure I wouldn't have bought at least 2/3 of my console games this generation(about 140 PS3/360 games I reckon) if it wasn't for them. Could've used that money for better things. Like beer.