Achievements/Trophies: The Good,bad, and ugly.

[darkante]

I personally never cared for achievements/trophies at all.
I´m only proving myself anyway.

[Delete]

Let's not forget Achievements that require you to replay the game multiple times. Fear is a good example for this......Read carefully, long sentence inbound.

You have to beat the game but it can't be on the lowest difficulty for one achievement. So you go to the second difficulty......this in return makes the one achievement for not dying a lot harder...(it can obviously be done but good luck). Then there is one for beating on the hardest difficulty. Oh I'm not done yet, Then there's another, beat the game using 500 rounds or less.........and another........beat the game without using slow mo wtffffffffff..........also you can count the finding all the health and boosters kinda even though that falls more under the collectible category of course.


There.

Damn, there's even one for killing every single enemy in the game. And that's not as easy as you'd think. I've pretty much killed everything I've seen and didn't get the cheevo.

[McLaughlin]

FFXIII's "Get every item in the game" one is annoying without the use of a guide. Doesn't tell you what you're missing and there are certain ones that if you happen to sell, you cannot upgrade to get a certain item, thus forcing you to start all over again in order to get it. I got lucky and didn't sell them >_>

Tales of Vesperia's "Complete each secret mission" one is okay, but if you want Yuri's costume, you must do this all in one file. For those that have played this game, you know how annoying / near impossible some of these can be, causing you to restart a fight because either you die trying to complete it or accidentally kill the boss.

Boring ones would be old Call of Duty ones, which was basically beat the entire game on Veteran. Not saying that isn't tough, but at least add some spice rather than making a 100 GS achievement for each stage on Vet.

FFXIII's Treasure Hunter has nothing on Lost Odyssey's Treasure Trove. You need to find ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, and there are easily over 1500 things to find. There's no in-game checklist either. This achievement literally ate away at my soul, until I played through the entire game again with a printed checklist to get it.

None of Vesperia's achievements really bothered me, but ToV is probably in my top five games this generation, so I may be biased. I can only think of two I actually had to restart to get (knocking a certain someone off a certain boat, and overloading that same someone's Bohdi Blastia). Dark Enforcer is his best costume anyway, although you need all the secret missions done to get a title for "They Call Me...".

I wouldn't necessarily call the CoD ones boring. Sometimes totally unfair? Yeah. Veteran in Call of Duty games is a test of will power, not skill. The infinite enemy spawns mean every encounter gets boiled down to "run like a motherfucker and pray to God you don't get hit thrice." Then there's the shenanigans known as No Fighting in the War Room, where the AI on the turret of instant death knows where you are and will shoot you through the wall.

I can't think of the hardest one I've done (Mile High Club is tedious, not hard), but the most boring would vwould have to be Treasure Trove, from Lost Odyssey. I imagine some of the Battle Trophy-related achievements in Star Ocean 4 could probably challenge for that title, but even my 1000/1000 OCD bows before that game.

Edit: If you want ridiculous online-only achievements, check out Armored Core 4: For Answer. Even if the online community for that game actually existed, those woule be next to impossible.

[Keilyn]

no thanks..

I am one of those players who has actually won regional and global team based tournaments in shooters. I don't go around bragging everywhere about it. The leaderboards do exist for a reason and its not the fault of the existence of leaderboards that so many players are assholes about their own position and power.

Play any MMORPG without a leaderboard and you deal with the same thing, a lot of kids conjuring up videos within their clans and guilds to act high and mighty of the fact.

Now what pisses me off greatly is the way shooters have become like MMORPGs lately.

10 years ago when you played a shooter it was all about you having a decent comp along with time on your hands to learn how to play the game and do well in a game type. There was no achievement for buying a game..

"Buy this game now and receive the special green giant middle finger on xbox 360, while playstation 3 owners get the red giant middle finger in-game item just for purchasing"

Today you play a shooter and you get some class-based playing because players are too dumb to actually use the weapon sets themselves and try to figure out which ones are good and which ones are bad....that is until you get to the end of all the experience and find out that you've unlocked so much crap that you can finally work on custom classes.

Just so you can feel mighty and proud for using all the in-game items you've acquired so you can beat newbs who have nothing to a bloody pulp just to keep your Kill to death Ratio out of the water.

If I want an in-game accomplishment, I rather get that from a Quest or something in-game that gives my characters an item...that is what happens in MMORPGs, but reaching an Achievement Score and unlocking an Achievement Proflle is so damn gratuitous that it feels like everyone is catering to the handicapped gamers out there who can't figure out how to win because they want to make everyone a winner out there.

Yeah, even if you suck and blow all 10 of your lives, we give you an achievement award....for actually losing..

This happens in PSU, you actually get an achievement award for getting knocked out in a map without any scapes. Its called "Safety First" and then when you do it again and again, you get even more titles.

Seems like life is now about everyone going out and trying to hold your hand to sell a game.

I loved how 10 years ago it was all about who was the better player and who had the better ping and computer setup, but the leagues I was in had every player get optimum framerate and performance....so it truly was about who was the more experienced, better player...Not none of that "If you play longer, we give you an advantage against a weaker player in the form of an item, as a measure of retarding the game for everyone."

The only good thing I can say about Game Achievements and Reward Systems is that you can isolate who is good and who plainly sucks..

Example. I play Civ 5 and around 1% of people got Masters of the Universe (Beat the game with all civs...which says nothing because they can all win at difficulty level 1) and Flawless Strategy (which is beat the game on max difficulty)..

At least I can say "Any player who has gotten Flawless strategy has to be decent compared to those who have not gotten it.."

So yeah, I suppose title systems are good for weeding out the good from the bad subjectively, but ONLY at the titles that really count. "Slay 1000 Motherbrains" for an award only says a person has played for a long time...."Get an award for incapping and losing the map" only says a person is new or really crappy, You would have to find out which titles actually do matter...."

So in a nutshell the achievements have only created one giant mess of things.

[Delete]

I think that's giving it too much attention Kei

Sure some achievements are dumb, but for the most part...it's not there because we have to get them. You will get some regardless, but it's still up to you if you want to try for any of them in the first place.

[Tetsaru]

I think achievements and trophies are a good way to promote replay value in games, as well as be able to show off what games you enjoy and are good at. *points to signature*

My thoughts on what are good achievements/trophies:

• Beat the game on X difficulty
• Collect all of the *insert random item here*
• Defeat X amount of enemies, possibly in a certain way
• Something humorous, story-related, or an "Easter Egg"
• Completing challenges that test your skill

Bad achievements/trophies imo would be:

• Online-related things that require excessive grinding or luck, and usually require other people to boost each other (also online ones that are no longer obtainable due to closed servers)
• Beat the entire game without getting hurt/without dying once
• Ones that are glitched or don't work properly
• Easily-missable ones that require a new playthrough
• Start game, receive achievement/trophy

There are several games on PS3 that are know to be difficult overall to platinum (Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, Street Fighter 4/Super Street Fighter 4, Wipeout HD, Warhawk, Star Ocean: The Last Hope, White Knight Chronicles, to name a few), but I believe one of the most ridiculous platinum trophies (meaning you have to get all the other trophies from the original set) I've heard of so far was on a boxing game, think it was Fight Night Round 4 or something like that. If I recall correctly, you had to possess all 3 online champion belts (one for each weight division) at the same time. The thing was, only one person out of the game's ENTIRE online community could be champion of a certain division at a time, so in order to boost for it, you literally had to track down the individuals who had the belts at the time and hope that they would be willing to part with them, and then manage to get all three. Other than that, there are also some games where it's impossible to earn a platinum or 100% now due to closed online servers. I remember one Lord of the Rings game had this problem, along with numerous older sports titles that get phased out when up-to-date ones are released.

I know a lot of these trophies/achievements are silly, but you can go to sites like PS3Trophies.org, Playfire.com, and Yourgamercards.net to get a good idea of how difficult they are and how many people have them. A platinum trophy for something like Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 would be much more respectable than something like the Hanna Montana video game...

[Out_Kast]

I think sometimes achievements/trophies take away from the core reason of buying games in the first place; playing them. I even find myself doing it - you keep on referring back to the list of achievements to see what else you can do, and you spend quite a portion of your time focusing on getting achievements rather than actually enjoying the game. Heck I even know people who only buy games for achievements. I guess for some people, games just aren't games any more...

[Randomness]

FFXIII's Treasure Hunter has nothing on Lost Odyssey's Treasure Trove. You need to find ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, and there are easily over 1500 things to find. There's no in-game checklist either. This achievement literally ate away at my soul, until I played through the entire game again with a printed checklist to get it.

None of Vesperia's achievements really bothered me, but ToV is probably in my top five games this generation, so I may be biased. I can only think of two I actually had to restart to get (knocking a certain someone off a certain boat, and overloading that same someone's Bohdi Blastia). Dark Enforcer is his best costume anyway, although you need all the secret missions done to get a title for "They Call Me...".

I wouldn't necessarily call the CoD ones boring. Sometimes totally unfair? Yeah. Veteran in Call of Duty games is a test of will power, not skill. The infinite enemy spawns mean every encounter gets boiled down to "run like a motherfucker and pray to God you don't get hit thrice." Then there's the shenanigans known as No Fighting in the War Room, where the AI on the turret of instant death knows where you are and will shoot you through the wall.

I can't think of the hardest one I've done (Mile High Club is tedious, not hard), but the most boring would vwould have to be Treasure Trove, from Lost Odyssey. I imagine some of the Battle Trophy-related achievements in Star Ocean 4 could probably challenge for that title, but even my 1000/1000 OCD bows before that game.

Edit: If you want ridiculous online-only achievements, check out Armored Core 4: For Answer. Even if the online community for that game actually existed, those woule be next to impossible.

Vesperia's one flaw is how many things can missed. I don't mind missing little cutscenes, but when you have things like one of Judith's best weapons being missable like five seperate times, it's kind of stupid.

I've never felt horribly inclined to pursue achievements, except when a reward is tacked on (Like in Mass Effect, for instance).

[McLaughlin]

I think the only way to completely miss Judith's Brionac is to not get that first cutscene in Rita's house, which does have a pretty short window. I think that one and the one at Ehmead Hill are the only ones that have a time limit on them (gotta do them before you enter Ragou's Mansion in Capua Nor), and I don't think the one at Ehmead Hill is even required.

I agree though, there are a lot of missable things, but such is the case with pretty much all Tails games (and many JRPGs in general).

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

Runaway Train (Bronze) - Knock down 100 people while running around town
(secret trophy)

Just got this. English Yakuza 3 here with the "Careless Dragon" title instead, dang it Sega.