Once upon a time I actually, tragically, cared about my achievement points. I was in some sort of weird race with my brother to get to 20,000 and I actually played certain games with the intent of scoring points. Nowadays? Achievements are just a weird thing that pop up on my screen every now and then.
Do you still care about achievements? Did you ever care about Trophies?
At one point I actually cited achievement points as a reason for playing games on the Xbox 360 instead of my PlayStation 3. What the hell was wrong with me?
Nowadays I’ve done a complete flip. Not only do I not care about trophies and achievement points, they sort of annoy me. Particularly when they pop up onscreen during pivotal moments in a game or during an important cut-scene. I keep forgetting to turn off the notifications. Urgh.
Anyway, question of the day: do you still care about achievements or trophies?
Comments
72 responses to “The Big Question: Do You Care About Achievements/Trophies?”
I don’t care about them – but I do get a smile every time one pops up and don’t find the pop ups annoying.
only trophies i ever cared about were in Mario Kart. the rest….meh.
Exactly the same here. Yes, I “care” in that I like getting them and occasionally check which ones I have, but I don’t usually care so much as to actually pursue them.
On the other hand I get a bit annoyed when I’ve played a game from beginning to end and get no more than 20% of the achievements available. That says to me that the devs are trying to get me to waste my time, especially since I normally try to explore a game reasonably thoroughly.
It doesn’t annoy me enough to spend time on those achievements. I’d rather play something new and interesting than grind achievements.
I can totally agree with you on the games that require multiple grindy play-throughs. I enjoy my JRPGs but when there are bad ending, multiple good endings and true ending trophies that mean you need to do half a dozen play-throughs just to get them all, it turns me off.
Yep – agree with both of you on all points.
theres only been two acheivements that I’ve cared about enough to actually go out of my way to get –
the one in Rocksmith 2014 for beating 15 tracks in score attack in Master mode, and the one in Torchlight 2 for beating it on insane difficulty with a hardcore character. other than that… nope.
If i am playing on a console then i love achievements 🙂 gives me little goals to work towards that i normally wouldn’t care about. If i am on Steam then i don’t care in the slightest i am just having a good time. on WOW i loooove achievements haha.
I used to care about them a little but more recently, I just haven’t given the slightest of a damn.
As a matter of fact, one of the things I loved about Journey was that no trophies popped until the end of my first run. It turns out that wasn’t a design choice, I just didn’t earn any. It was still damned rad.
More recently, I did make an effort to earn all achievements in Spelunky. Part of it is because the Spelunky subreddit gives flairs to people for beating Olmec, beating Yama and getting all achievements but mostly it was because the harder achievements were genuinely interesting challenges. Let me tell you, no gold runs of Spelunky are a hell of a thing.
Of course, I’m still playing the game and aiming to do things beyond what the achievements call for (solo eggplant run, $2m+ score run, sub 4min low% run). Maybe the achievements themselves were the driving factor here, my own insanity definitely played a part.
I sure do care! I think a game with a good, creative achievement list can encourage me to see things or do things in a different way than I may have, sans achievements. And some achievements I have unlocked over the years I am genuinely proud of, like 5* every song in Guitar Hero 3 on expert.
I agree with you insomuch that an achievement that was actually difficult is actually worth achieving. However. The current state of things is what puts me off them.
Whenever I see Achievement Unlocked: First Login, deep inside me is an earth shattering groan trying desperately to escape.
I only care about achievements in WoW that actually reward you with something, whether it be an in-game title, mount or pet. Other than that, couldn’t care less about them but I wouldn’t say they annoy me.
I think I answered this question recently and the short answer is “yes, but…”
The long answer is that the Xbox One interface has made viewing achievements incredibly inefficient. While I get a degree of satisfaction from unlocking achievements, I no longer actively pursue them or care about my completion total. If the game itself has rewards for in-game completion of collectibles or what have you I will consider if I am interested in doing that for it’s own sake rather than adding 20 points to my gaming penises.
Basically, I cared until the 360 stopped being my primary games console. Now… not really. I like them in principle but they’re no longer inextricably woven into the experience of playing the game like they once were. Oddly I care more about Steam achievements now, since the details of which achievements are unlocked is front and centre when I view the game in my library.
Havent they updated the UI to make the achievements a bit more front and centre? I know mine has some sort of leaderboard with the top 5 people on my friends list with the most points this week or month or whatever it is. And the snap achievements is cool.
I dont really care about them so dont use it unless I unlock one and want to see what it was.
My problem is when you go to your notifications it shows you the achievement you unlocked but when you try to look for more detail it launches the game. You have to go to the achievement-specific menu and even then it will still prompt you. The minimalist design of the snap menu for achievements is actually the perfect achievement-viewing menu, I just wish it was available without being a snap option for the specific game you’re playing. In short, the current system is overly convoluted. What I want is a checklist, and I don’t see what was wrong with the old system on the 360.
Yeah I get you, there is still some tweaks needed to the UI overall. MS did it with the 360. That thing evolved heaps over its lifecycle. And I think its gotten way better in this short amount of time. I reckon it’ll come good eventually.
Not having much care for achievements its not bothered me.
Like a lot of the XBOX One UI it’s technically doing what it used to but it does it in a very disconnected way. Where the XBOX 360 would just instantly pop up an overlay the XBOX One takes you into another app (with all the loading that comes with that). Even when it’s snapped to the side it somehow takes you out of the game more than the old full screen overlay.
They were aiming for modular with the XBOX One using apps for core functionality but it ended up making a lot of very smooth experiences way too rough to bother with. It doesn’t help that company wide Microsoft seem to have no clue what makes an app good. My Lumia, Surface and XBOX all have apps that prove Microsoft think ‘app’ means ‘regular software smashed with a hammer until it fits onto a touch screen’.
I don’t care about achievements as a measure of e-peen, but I do care about them as a way of new challenges to try within a game. That’s why it really annoys me when a game’s achievements are just based on progression or act as milestones for something you do naturally often in a game (eg. Defeating 1000 enemies or collecting 200 bajillion collectibles).
As @blacksword says below those type of achievements are a good measure of how far people are progressing in a game. So you can see how far through a friend is.
Although the primary reason for those is for the developer to see how far people are going, if there is a massive road block or where people are rage quitting
I still care about achievements. I think it’s a great way of letting others know “Hey I have completed this game” and helps you explore and experience everything that has been put into a game by its developers.
I don’t give a toss now. I got 100% achievements in 1 360 game and have platinum trophied a couple of Playstation games but it’s not something I actively seek out to do unless I have gained most of them just by playing the game normally.
I’m a completionist with most of my favorite games, so they provide proof and tangible reward for both incredibly hard accomplishments, and shows your dedication and enjoyment of the game. Nothing wrong with that. E.g., I only have the Beat Zico trophy left to get on WipEout HD, and I’m very proud of that.
I never used to, but nowadays they are an itch i need to scratch, especially on Steam and PS4. I dedicated 140 hours to XCOM on Steam because I was trying to get all achievements (and have almost got them). It gives a game replayability in my case. I’m sure I’ll get sick of it at some point, but right now I am always keen to try and get whatever I can.
Nope, but when one pops up I’ll typically go in to it and find out what it was for.
Nope, have never given a stuff about achievements at all.
I find they generally pull me out of the game experience as well, I don’t like them or see the poitn of them honeslty.
Never have, never will. In fact, I deplore them.
Achievements are for the “everyone is a winner” crowd. The hand holding generation in which needs to be drip fed constant positives for the tiniest things or their frail little minds will explode.
An achievement for a game used to be unlocking a new character, power, or level. But since that’s now something you pay for, we have seen it been replaced by meaningless praise. Heck, some of the hardest games ever in gaming only gave you a crappy screen with congratulations written on it… And then a bit telling you to grow some balls and complete it on hard mode
One could argue that you’re in the ‘gimme gimme gimme’ mindset because you’re focused on the reward. Obviously they’d be wrong, but that’s more or less the simplification you’re making with people who enjoy achievements. I was fully completing games decades before achievements. Completitionists are one of the base gamer types.
Sure there are some people who care too much about their gamerscore but they tend to be the ones who don’t care about the game praising them. They tend to be the ones who view it in a spreadsheet and don’t care how or why they were given the achievement as long as it makes their score go up.
One of the most common achievements is ‘beat it on the hardest difficulty mode’, usually with a ‘beat it on hard mode while doing something stupid like not using anything other than the default gun’ thrown in for kicks.
Honestly answer: Yes.
BuBut can I be bothered? No.
I like trying to get as many as I can in the course of playing a game but once I’m done I don’t usually go back to get ones I’ve missed
Not really. Mainly since the 360 never got much attention from me.
On the one hand it’s really cool having these little challenges in there that can get you off the beaten track and doing things you otherwise wouldn’t. And accidentally finding something is pretty cool. But on the other, having that popup chime in whenever you reach the end of a level or something is ridiculously annoying and jarring and I hate it.
I don’t care at all for system-wide achievements, and don’t understand why people were always screaming for Nintendo to add them in. If a dev wants to have something like that in their game then hey, go for it. It was a cool touch to have a few little secret sequences in Metroid Prime 3 be acknowledged and rewarded. But it’s totally not necessary for every single game.
I like them as an added trial to test yourself and give more reason to go back and play games you love or in some cases try out rpg classes you never would have tried before or play styles you never would have before, there just a fun little collectible
I use to care allot more than I do now, not sure if its the whole X1 interface or just getting older and no time for it, I had about 54k on an old profile that was filled with some shockers, Avatar, movie games, kids games, all sorts, have tried to keep my current profile relatively respectable, I’m just shy of 75,000G, basically now if its still fun I’ll do it.
Only on games I like as it sort of promotes another playthrough. Although it’s nothing I go out of the way for, evident by my low amount of PS trophies.
Neope….I’ve resigned to the fact that I’m terrible at mos tgames. The only games where I do go for platinum tho are the Lego games….cos they’re easy to get with patience.
I like them but the way I play, I’ll start a game, not finish it and go back a few months later and restart it. I’d love to be able to reset the trophies for a replay.
Also, I’d care a LOT more if they seperated single-player and multi-player trophies. Nothing like buying a 3-4 year old game and not being able to 100% it because the servers have been shut down
Totally agree, MP achieves are the worst,
3 or 4 years? Try 3 or 4 weeks. The server may still be up but it’s usually a ghost town on anything that’s not a hugely established multiplayer brand. The world could use more optimistic developers betting on their games being more than just a flash in the pan, but be realstic when you add achievements.
Beyond that multiplayer achievements just suck because 90% of the time they encourage players to play badly/selfishly. I remember with Halo 3 I got sick of playing because every other match was both teams coming to the silent agreement to stop fighting and grind out the multiplayer achievements.
I used to care more on 360, but i still care a fair bit on the One,
I like to think of most achievements as little bonus objectives, and i look for opportunities to get them. I also really like seeing 1000/1000 on a game, or 100% as the One puts it.
I’m extremly proud of my 1000/1000 for the first Dead Rising, that was very hard.
Weirdly, I dont care about “Trophys” on PS3 at all, possible because they were added as an afterthought on that system.
Never have, never will. I’m usually happy just finishing the game at 100% completion without doing some arbitrary thing like drive a car in a straight line for 20 minutes to earn a virtual trophy or achievement. In most of my games I usually only get the trophies you get during normal play so by the time I finish them I’m usually only at around 30-40% or so.
Same, I just play the game, if I get an achievement, wowie, but i don’t do anything at all to specifically get them.
Yes, but I’m getting sick with how lazy developers are getting with achievements and I despise multiplayer achievements (mainly because the game will die shortly after release).
Yes, but for replaying games I like to get more out of them or try different classes or something .I don’t like how the multiplayer ones are lumped in though, because I very rarely multiplayer and sometimes your percentage trophies completed looks like rubbish, even when it isn’t, because there are a billion multiplayer trophies to not get too.
Nope not at all.
Anyone else notice that when the survey loads, YES is on top, and then when it finishes loading NO is on top. How do I know that my vote was correct? There is no validation or confirmation?
If I’m really enjoying a game I will look at the trophy list and then try and get them. Otherwise I never really pay attention to them.
Sometimes!
I did in Dark Souls and Dark Souls II, where getting the all-achievements achievement became a welcome obsession and a point of personal pride.
Usually, though, not so much. I’ll check through the list and see if there are some that might be fun to go after (like the Test of Faith in Mirror’s Edge, which is my #1 fave achievement from any game, or something like “assassinate five guys under the cover of one smoke bomb” from AC:Bro”), but I won’t prolong my time with a game I’d otherwise be finished with by pursuing achievements.
What was Test Of Faith? My PC copy didn’t have achievements.
IIRC Test of Faith was completing the game without firing a gun.
That’s the one. Really added so much to the game experience.
Yeah. It was a really nice way to prod players into playing the game a certain way without just forcing them to.
My favourite AC Achievement was Monster Mash, I think you had to poison a brute and have his resulting rampage kill five other guards.
Yes and no. I would still enjoy the games without them, but it is nice when they pop up after you complete specific tasks.
I have sacrificed them on Minecraft. I was playing in survival mode, but decided that I wanted to build some crazy contraptions which required me to move to creative mode. Can’t say I miss them, the fun in Minecraft is going nuts building things, not getting trophies because you killed 10 skeletons.
not in the slightest. It annoys me when they pop up on my xbox one during gameplay
Never have, never will. Don’t know why anyone does. No one looks at your profile and no one cares.
Depends on what the context of the achievement is. If it’s something interesting, such as listening to Wheatley’s instructions in Portal 2, or its a challenge, such as Freeflow Perfection in Arkham Asylum, I will actively go for them. If they’re something like Ghosts’ ‘kill your first enemy in the campaign’, go stick it where the sun don’t shine.
I did… once. Then Assassin’s Creed tasked me with finding 420 flags scattered around the world. I found 419. Spent hours upon hours following guides checking the locations of each one, only to find it already collected, until I finally gave up.
It made me realise that these collectibles only exist to justify the existence of the achievements – which they admittedly (kinda) fixed in later iterations (where collectibles unlocked new skins or armour or whatever, but generally, whatever gameplay advantage collectibles gave, it was far outweighed by the boredom of the task of collecting them.
Then there’s the story achievements. Sometimes they can be good for a chuckle, but occasionally they completely ruin the experience (take the Walking Dead’s “Too much salt will kill you” achievement, for example, which pops up immediately after forcing you to kill a central character with a salt-block).
So, generally, they don’t add anything to the game for me, and can severely detract from it in many cases.
Depends on the game, but yes. In WoW I was a bit of an achievement whore… and trying to do stuff like getting every rare drop on the Timeless Isle, Bloodthirsty in pvp, etc. saps your life.
Sometimes getting achievements is satisfying, but they often don’t make you a better gamer as pursuing achievements can suck time away from practising to improve in a game.
Trophies are the only reason why I haven’t created a new PSN account and that I’m still stuck with my “sub-account”, too many trophies to have just disappear…
I like achievements/trophies for two reasons, firstly it gives me a goal to try and get. So many games I would have finished and discarded, achievements gave me a reason to try a harder difficulty or to take the time to explore the world the devs have made in search of collectible items. Were it not for collectibles, I’d have missed half the world created for Fallout 3 and there are some amazing areas in that game you’d miss otherwise.
Second reason, I like seeing in my activity feed what my friends are up to. Congratulate them on beating certain achievements and using it as a good excuse to work with them on something.
I rarely get 100% anymore, mostly because devs put in crap like “play 10000 hours online”. Thats not an achievement, thats a poor method to keep people playing your game. I ignore those. Likewise “get 10000 kills in ranked games” is just asking for people interested in achievements to invade the leaderboards of serious players. I blame the devs here.
Not really. I do sometimes try to do achievements if they encourage me to play in a different way or they represent a challenge that might be fun. I dont see the point in those collect 100 things (that do absolutely nothing) throughout the world achievements. Why do people subject themselves to that?
I Like them and like getting them. but I think if they got rid of them id still play games but maybe some games wouldn’t get a look in or I wouldn’t play all the way through some games without that little lure there of achievements. They are good as a little badge to say I finished this or that game or did something in a game but they also can highlight how much of a gamer you are and how much time you sink into those black boxes.
If I get one in a game I’ll think oh, wonder what I did to get that. I really don’t care at all. Games are about story & gameplay for me, I don’t get excited by trophies & achievements.
I like achievements but I don’t like how most of them makes you do stupid stuff that takes all of my free time away.
I wonder which game would be the hardest to 1000GP/Platinum (Discluding impossible achievements for disabled/online/multiplayer reasons.)
I actually heard Dead Or Alive Xtreme 2 can take 700+ hours to do a little less if you spreadsheet and try and apply a proper strategy for gift giving. regardless your in for a slog.
There’s quite a few games that pick totally arbitrary numbers for their achievements, those tend to be the most frustrating because they’re not even trying to make them long and grindy, they’re just being lazy. Ie, they have ‘kill a thousand enemies with this weapon’ achievements for every gun, but they ask the same amount of kills with the rare weapons as they do with the commonly used ones. Then because it’s such a notoriously bad achievement they times it by ten for the sequel.
There’s a ton of high skill games like Trials and games where they’ve just set the bar too high (world record is 1:20:07 and the time you need for the achievement is 1:22:00).
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway had a relatively easy list, but then they made it so you have to play on September 17th in order to unlock one (almost a full year after launch if I remember correctly). You also had to play once a day for 7 days, once a day for 100 days and once a week for 3 months for another set of achievements in there.
Occassionally you’ll see a perfect storm of a bad achievement list where it’s like 500,000 kills in the games sucky ghost town of a multiplayer mode, using only the default weapons (which happen to be ridiculously bad and impractical), and kills only count if the match ranked and fully populated so if even one person drops out you lose all your kills for the match.
It depends on how you define hardest. Rarest, longest or most difficult due to skills required or luck.
Games like GT5 or those fvcking Disgaea games (which I love but are brutal if you want to go for a platinum) are more time consuming than hard per se. Some of the rarest platinum trophies are surprisingly EA Sports games like Fight Night Champion and UFC while the hardest ones based on skills seem to be the likes of WipeOut HD or Street Fighter 4, Guitar Hero or Ninja Gaiden Sigma.
It’s a bit of a loaded question for me. Yes, I enjoy them, I’m a completionist so I enjoy getting 100% on a game and achievements tend to give me a good reason to play through a good game twice, but do I care about them? Not really. The only time I care about my gamerscore is when I can get it to land exactly on a landmark number. At 100,000 gamerscore it was more like hitting 44,444km in a car.
Individual achievements can be fun challenges but I tend to forget them as soon as they’re over. There’s probably a handful of achievements that really stand out in my mind.
I love trophies/achievements but I wouldn’t miss them if they were gone.
I’ll usually check them after I finish playing a new game for the first time to see what sort of challenges I can aim for while I’m replaying if I’ve enjoyed the game, but only if I really, really like the game will I go for a platinum/100%. As such I have about 8 platinum trophies and annoyingly I am 1 trophy short in 3 other games (Assassin’s Creed 2 (kill 10 or 20 people in open combat without getting hit), Fallout 3 (reach level 20 with neutral karma) and Dark Souls (stupid unique weapons trophy).
I really like Steam achievements in strategy games like Civ V and Banished etc. They can really inject some fun little challenges in to the game. Other than those sorts of games I unusually care very little for them.
Fkn 10/10. I’ve platinumed almost everything I’ve played, except for some of the bullshit online ones which require friends. Developers shouldn’t be allowed to make games with those.
I like the achievements found in the borderlands series, especially 2 and pre sequel as they give you a return across most of your skills i.e gun damage, accuracy, fire rate, health and continue across all your heroes. There’s something similar in Diablo 3.
Its an in game system and for the most part happens naturally as you play the game and gradually increases the strength of your character. In Borderlands two after I had finished playing two of the characters and started a third the accumulation of strength increases the games re-playability and is just a good mechanic to have.
If I really like a game I might set out to get all the achievements, like I did with Shadow of Mordor. Otherwise I view them as a sort of a “That sounds hard… let’s try it” type thing.
Grinding achievements (i.e. Collect all 8902 generic useless collectible) I laugh at and ignore.
Never do I worry about not having an achievement or needing to get them.
I like them in terms of historical value. I think they provide a good guide regarding how and to what extent a person has played a game. Otherwise I like the unique ones that encourage a bit of exploration.
COD: Zombies. The reason to aim for achievements/trophies.
no
No. Never been interested in them.
I was really into trophies for a bit… then i had a kid.
They are great when they are designed to encourage the player to explore area’s of the game that wouldn’t normally see alot of exploration, such as specific mechanics or area’s. Trophy hunting is also a great way to squeeze all of the value out of your purchase.
I don’t mind the achievements, but I hate the online ones, especially in games that have crap multi-player and they are ridiculous targets.
The worst trophy ever must be 10,000 kills in online multi-player for Resistance 2. Impossible, when games were limited to 25 kills max.
Pointless and add nothing the game. Maybe if getting them unlocked content, I might give a toss.
I answered yes because I think they were actually a wonderful innovation where you can see what parts of a game your friends have played, I don’t bust a gut going after them though, the only game I’ve ever gotted 1000g in was Assassin’s Creed II and those last few (the feathers, wearing the cape in every city and trying to throw sand at three guards at once I think) were really hard and annoying to get
Back when I only had like 3 Xbox 360 games, I saw them as a way to pad out the experience, and nothing more. Tired of the game after beating it two times? Try to get all the achievements!
If I really love the game and I’ve got over half already I find myself wanting to “100%” it, getting as many achievements as I can, while most games I’m not that fussed either way. I do like achievements that change the way you play a game though, especially in examples like “The one free bullet” or any stealth/ non-lethal run through of anything, they are a really cool use of achievements.
That achievement getting the gnome in HL2 episode 2 to the rocket at the end frustrated the hell out of me, but is to date the only achievement I’m vaguely “proud” of getting, as pathetic as that is.
I used to as I have 100% every game I have, however they keep adding DLC or new games (Ultra Street Fighter IV) to previous completed games. I do have a perfectionist mentality and I believe this system brings out the WORST in people with the mental condition like mine.
I wish there was a way when playing a game you can turn these off/delete them from your profile and when syncing if they have been deleted ask if you want them removed from the server.
They add no value to your account (especially on the {PlayStation side, unsure on the Xbox side).
I Hate Trophies
I don’t actively try to increase my gamer score, but if I already love a game, then getting all the achievements and trophies kind of gives me an excuse to keep playing that awesome game, just like how in the old days I’d try and obtain 100% completion if there was an option. Sometimes I do find achievements and trophies motivating – particularly if the achievement is for completing a specific challenge or accomplishing something that requires some level of skill or difficulty. I like that facet of achievements. They’re little self-imposed challenges, which I find a fun part of gaming.
I may not always care about achievements or trophies, but on the whole I certainly like them more than I dislike them. I don’t think they’re in any way a bad thing.