Your Rants On Achievements/Trophies

[Fijiman]

I don't necessarily hate multiplayer achievements, but I sure as hell can't be arsed to give a shit about most of them. More specifically the ones that require you to get X amount of kills with/on blank, especially when it's for a game type I have no intentions of ever playing. If there is one thing I do hate though, it's achievements for games that are linked to DLC. I hate it when you don't even have the DLC and yet the achievements pop up in the list, especially for games which I have absolutely no intentions for getting the DLC.

My only complaint right now is that I got an achievement a while ago, I think it was Halo 4, with a 2 or 7 on the end so now my gamer score doesn't end in a 5 or 0.

It really bugs me.
It shouldn't but it does.

Actually I think it might be from Reach because I have a similar achievement from there that does that. I'll have to check later to see if there's one on Halo 4, but it is pretty stupid since the achievement that would fix the problem is one of the match making achievements.

There's an achievement for TF2 where you have to invite a certain number of friends to play with you and when I see it all I can think is "Oh thank you Valve, thank you for reminding me that I have no friends." *sobs*

...In all seriousness achievements that have to be earned through online multiplayer tend to be pretty bullshit. Especially when the servers aren't running anymore so it becomes impossible to get said achievement.

Edit: It seems people have already mentioned bullshit multiplayer achievements. Sorry for not reading posts before posting.

I remember that achievement, I don't have it either because even when I was still playing it I only ever had like three friends that played it at any one time and I'm not going out of my way to beg people to be my friend just for a stupid achievement. This is also not helped by the fact that, as of the last time I checked, TF2 for the Xbox was still vanilla and filled with games hosted by complete douchebags. I can only be spawn killed on 2Fort but so many times before the game becomes not fun.

 

[Smolderin]

I think "seething resentment" is a bit of an overstatement. I would agree in that I don't think trophies are actively taking anything away from games and in fact I've seen one or two that have given me ideas or challenges that are worth trying out, and could be satisfying to get, like say that one in the recent Xcom to take on a crash site with a single soldier. I get that, there's fun and a challenge there.
But when it comes to actively boring yourself by doing tedious busy work like find x amount of this or do this thing x number of times I don't get why people care enough to do that for something that is essentially worthless and doesn't add to your experience. If you've finished the story and seen all the content why does an arbitrary number of collectibles or enemies slain make it more complete?

Ya, seething resentment is a overstatement but while writing I tend to be naturally dramatic. Can't help it at times.

Anyways I think in my case it boils down to sentiment and meaning. It is a tiny bit challenging to explain but I will do what I can to accurately detail. What kept me going through that Gummi Ship Collector trophy, despite it's boring, tedious, missions was an actual desire to complete the game. Except in my case, completing the game IN MY EYES meant getting this trophy. Why? Because it was there. A trophy or achievement, is in it's own way, a small part of the games content. I treated them as little mini missions, as if they were built into the game itself. When I picked up KH 1.5HD Remix, I told myself that this would be the first game I ever get Platinum because this game held so much meaning to me. Getting Platinum held the meaning of completion in regards to that game. I gave meaning and purpose to a feature that by all logic has none other than to brag to your friends what a cool digital picture you got for beating the first boss on easy mode. It may not have any meaning to you, but it meant something to me. It meant honoring a game that gave me much joy when I was younger, a game that sparked my love for RPG's in general, and a game that quite honestly helped me through a rough patch in my life. I hope that better explains why I decided to put myself through that little bit of boring, and tedious activities.

 

[MHR]

Achievements for online play are absurd and I usually just refuse to do them on principle. Like others have said, the online community for a lot of random games just doesn't exist after a time, and sometimes whatever tacked-on online multiplayer is just something I'm not willing to explore.

Exclusive online games like TF2 or MMOs are different. They're nothing but online so....

 

[EHKOS]

One more for the online hate-train. Watch Dogs made it pretty quick and painless except for the hacking which was completely unbalanced.

Besides the online, I suppose the only trophies I have a problem with are: "Beat the game on hard...now beat the game on harder than hard that you had to unlock by playing hard."

I do like collectables trophies. Far Cry 3 was great about that because getting to places was fun. WD...not so much, those city hotspots are boring and driving through the city is boring. Still going to platinum it though.

I don't understand this mentality. You've just said it's boring so why would you keep doing it to get a trophy that does nothing for you? I can put up with a fair amount of grind if it gives me something in return like access to new content or items but not for a little picture on your account that means nothing and does nothing. Why wouldn't you just play something that's actually fun instead?

Not trying to antagonize or pick on you specifically here, it's just that your quote nicely sums up an attitude that I see a lot, which boils down to "ugghhh this is not fun but I'm not gonna stop", and I just don't understand why people do this to themselves. What is so attractive about trophies and achievements?

While I certainly can't speak for everyone, I would assume it's psychological. Sometimes I find myself wondering why I'm chasing a trophy. I suppose for me it's because a Platinum trophy shows achievement, which is rare in my real life, so however meaningless, it is considered rare and thus valuable.
It's kind of funny though, inFamous 2 was fun to get, even though you had to chase down...what was it like 300? But it was fun because you could get around the city in an enjoyable way, so I didn't mind it. WD's transportation sucks so I suppose that's something against it.

 

[Qvar]

There's so much shitty achievements in any game this days, I don't bother anymore. Examples:

1. Online achivements. As soon as I see one I forget about trying to get achievements for that game.

2. Chore achievements. "Kill X amount of Ys", "get X amount of kills with Y". Well thank you, but even a 2 years old could do that, it doesn't sound much of an "achievement" to me.

3. Beating the game achievements that don't give you the lower difficulty ones. Really. I'm not going to play your game over and over just because you didn't find a better way to force me to than this one.

4. Non-achievements such as "get killed X amount of times". Because it's stupid getting yourself killed 50 times on pourpose, no matter how you paint it.

5. "complete the tutorial". Sigh.

 

[happyninja42]

The flags in Assassin's Creed. Fuck. That. Achievement. A shit-ton of flags in an area,no help from your map, and no reward make this thing useless. I've gone through that game multiple times and have never even looked for those damn flags. The feathers were pretty damn annoying in 2, but I think you could buy maps to find them. Or at least you could in Brotherhood.

Ugh, yes, this. This so hard.

I've never cared for achievement hunting, because it's always felt like being forced to go easter egg hunting, but all the eggs are empty. The AC flag one was sort of the straw that broke the camels back in my case.

I don't mind them if they're worked into the tapestry of the game flow, but when you force me to go ridiculously out of my way to accomplish them, breaking all in-game rationale for the characters actions, simply to give me a reason to run all over your 3D rendered world and admire it...yeah, screw that.


I actually liked how some games have done them, like the inFamous games, Alpha Protocol, Borderlands 2, Fallout NV, etc. Those games, there is actual tangible benefit for completing the achievements. You quietly took down 100 enemies in a non-lethal manner? Congratulations, here's an achievement, and we're going to improve your stealth capabilities a small amount. You've killed 200 mutated animals in FNV? Congrats, have an achievement, and get a +5% damage bonus when fighting mutated animals. You spent a lot of time running around Empire City doing the easter egg hunting for the core shards? (given an in game reason for being scattered everywhere that makes sense) Congratulations, you've got a WAY larger power pool to draw from to power your abilities compared to someone who didn't bother doing all that.


If you make it worth my time, and actually make me feel like I've achieved something tangible, then I'm way more tolerant of your achievements. Make them absolutely pointless, and I'm not going to waste any of my time to complete them. I mean, if you couldn't be bothered to code them to be worth my time...why should I waste it on your little hoop jumping thing? Pssh, no thanks.

 

[Woiminkle]

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Fair enough, I suppose. I can kinda see where you're coming from, I've come up with silly stuff to do to keep me coming back to my favourite games and I guess having something to represent your total devotion to a particularly loved game is an idea I can understand. I guess it's because I'm a bit older now that I don't feel as emotionally attached to games as I once did in the pre-achievement days of yore, when for instance the end theme to Legend of Zelda kinda choked me up, makes the idea a little underwhelming to me personally.

Anyway thanks for engaging with me on the subject, it's a case of different strokes but I can see where you guys are coming from better now.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Fuck Multiplayer achievements
fuck grinding achievements

I don't want to grind to level 60 in Tomb Raider! I just don't. I'm not going to play your fucking multiplayer. Now I'm going to have 750 out of 1000 and it's going to stay that way forever!

Fuck your grinding achievements! doing the same thing over and over isn't fun.
There are only so many Podcasts I can listen to while I grind out thousands of random kills.

By the way I just hit 75,000 gamerscore, yay!
Everyone hates me for being an achievement whore

 

[rocketdive2001]

There was one achievement on Battlefield 3 that i couldn't get due to a game glitch ... and i have no intention to replay the whole thing again. Multi-player achievements make my blood boil too ... can't ever complete a platinum unless i am playing "Walking Dead".