Downfall of Achievements/Trophies?

What's your opinion on Achievements/Trophies? I used to love them and did my best to get as many as I could but for the last 2 years I just really don't care anymore. The game at least has to be pretty amazing for me to do something just to earn a trophy.

Then I saw this from Kotaku when they asked Cliff Bleszinski this question:

1. What impact do you think the popularity of Achievements has had on gaming?

Bleszinski: I used to like them. The more I worked around with the system the less I liked them. Watching my wife do a bunch of silly things in a game just for the points bothers the heck out of me. If you ask me, a system more like what Valve is doing with their cards is far more compelling for the future of games.

What do you think? Are Achievements/Trophies still relevant, did you used to like them or did you never care for them?

Achievments were never relevant, at least if you ask me. That being said, I still enjoy them, but not as something meaningful but just as little special tasks in a game. I will never ever do "Collect x rocks" achievments but some of them are rather fun.

I liked them a lot in WoW but they ended up being a huge part of the reason I quit that game because they started to dictate how I played and steered me towards things that weren't fun.

It's nice to get them now, but I'll never go chasing them again.

They're nothing special it just gives people something to do if their bored. Though some people like to get achievements to brag about them, which is just silly to me, like people is suppose to care.

I think the problem is developers in general have been too lazy to make them interesting.

The original Dead Rising is a great example of a game that is improved by the achievements it has; they help lead the player towards new and interesting ways to play the game they might not have done on their own. Unfortunately, that type of effort put into the achievement system never became the norm. Instead all achievements tend to be are mile markers in story progression.

I don't care about getting achievements like "Beat Chapter 1" or "Get 10 Headshots". However, a surprise achievement popping up because I did something crazy, unique, or otherwise awesome is still really cool. The latter just never seems to happen much anymore.

I used to go for 360 achievements, but don't really care anymore because I'm not getting an Xbox One for a few years. Plus achievements like Seriously 3.0 can go fudge themselves; I'm not doing that unless I keep playing Gears 3 for five years.

The more I think about it, the more I like the Steam system of achievements where no universal "score" exists. That gives developers the freedom to place as many or as few goals as they want, and lessens players' desire to "catch 'em all." People are more inclined to get achievements and collect Steam cards for the games they really love and eschew the ones they don't.

I have found that not previewing them before i start a game has been refreshing. I dont grind for them much anymore but i do miss them on the site to be able to compare to those that play and finish games, and those that just troll.

I was really into them for a while, and worked my gamerscore to 100K. After that, it wasn't so interesting for me anymore, and really, it just made me play games I probably wouldn't have bother finishing otherwise.

The real eye opener was playing the TLoU. It was refreshing to play through the game and not have a little ding after every chapter, or big encounter. And the one that did pop up during the game (for crafting, I think) seemed really out of place and interfered with the atmosphere. I suppose there's a time and place for a well placed achievement pop, but I think I'm mostly over it at this point

Never been remotely fussed about them. Have no idea what my 360 and PS3 "scores" are for these things. Plenty of friends will play a game to death to get them though.

I still like them. I like having my game progress documented, and getting random one-off achievements for doing something weird.

I kind of like them, because they're able to highlight content that you otherwise might have missed, and they add a decent social angle to single-player games that has been lacking since games generally went from score-based to narrative-based structures. Also they give off somewhat useful metrics, e.g. looking at the Steam achivements for FFVII show that less than 2% of the people who bought it have gone on to finish the game.

But yeah, since 2005 Xbox Live Gamerscores have gone through the roof and I'm far less inclined to spend an extra five hours doing something just for an extra 50 points or whatever. Plus, apart from dubious bragging rights you're not really getting anything back for them. Xbox Live Rewards had a decent idea, but they never really went anywhere with it.

Valve's trading cards system does seem interesting in that you can theoretically get stuff (even money) back from it, but the fact that you don't really need to do anything for them to drop, or that it'll inevitably lead to people buying shitty games just because they drop cards, means about five years down the line we'll probably be pretty apathetic about that too.

I dont think i ever cared about them.

Valves trading cards actually seems pretty gross to me, people seem to think Valve can do no wrong, but they're effectively monetizing achievements here....

As long as they keep having cool little pictures for the achievements I am happy.

I MUST HAVE ALL JURASSIC PARK REFERENCE ACHIEVEMENTS!

Achievements are the game's way of acknowledging what many of us have been doing for decades. I played the shit out of GTA III, and spent tons of fun time jumping cars of makeshift ramps and trying to get to weird high places to jump off of. Now I'm playing Saints Row III, doing the same stuff, and getting Steam achievements for it. It's making a new game out of a game that you've finished. Like when you get bored of playing one-on-one basketball, so you say, "okay, we can only dribble with left hands and have to shoot with our eyes closed". For a game to recognize the possibility for that stuff is great.

Also, they can direct you content that you missed. I played Portal 2 recently (absolutely amazing, btw) and thought I'd found all of Ratman's little rooms, but then saw an achievement that I didn't understand. Looked up a guide, and voila, I'm smashing through a whole new creepy hidden one. Neat!

So achievements in theory are fun, helpful, and and add extra value to something you bought. It's things like MS's requirement of 1,000 points leads to stuff like "finished Chapter 1. +25 points" which is at best just utterly pointless, and at worst kind of taking the sense of accomplishment away from the player because you don't feel that extra "wow, I did something new and cool" so when it suggests you did, it's a bit disappointing.

Basically, good achievements are good, and always will be.

Also, I don't think Cliff understands Steam Cards.

They used to be fun but I realized that they were ruining games for me.

I think the issue with achievements is that they are presented as a "Shopping List", rather than an unlock. So that, for many people instead of rewarding their specific/unique behaviour in the game - it creates a list of actions people need to do in order to fully "Complete" the game.

Steam cards are just a way of gamifying the purchase and playing of specific games, you don't get cards for achieving anything, just for putting the time in, and you also only get so many cards, having to wait until new unlocks show up. I suppose this works out well for the Marketplace, as it creates scarcity.

Not really. You're given steam cards for time spent in a game, nothing else. I got McPixel, left it on by accident when I was eating lunch, and 2 cards dropped when I was just in the main fucking menu.

Also, monetizing isn't the right word here, since you just get them. If you buy the game, you'll get some cards along with it. And they have zero impact on the game itself. The monetization of the cards only applies if you're interested in trading them to get more or different ones. Or just sell them and get some free money .

I really don't see how any of that is remotely gross.

I still like them a lot, they are a jumping of point for me to do interesting/challenging things in games. For that the achievements have to be well designed though. Also I play on PC mainly and Steam games are more or less impossible to 100% due to the sheer abundance and silliness of them, so I do not care about that anymore.

I'm with CliffyB on this one. I thought they were fun at first but once they started dictating how I played my games I gave up on them.

I'm the biggest achievement hater on the site planet. I feel like I'm in They Live and am the only one that can see the true horror. With the xbox one of their uses is slowing down games going into the 2nd hand market because people are more likely to grind and replay. For many you're actually doing stuff in games you wouldn't do - bad stuff, boring stuff, stuff that will make you angry. You can't say it's that person's fault because they're absolutely not voluntary because there's no way of disabling them. Make their tracking 100% optional and I'd be happy - people who want them have them, I don't.

Validating them by comparing them to high scores is also a crap straw man argument. Have an online high score table if you need that.

I thought PC gaming would be a liberation from them but then found out Steam has the damn thing. My pc is crap so I've only got one game with achievements on Steam but still dreaded it. I heard Jeff talking about Steam Achievement Manager and looked into youtube videos and it turns you you can unlock them all at the start and when you finish lock them all again. That's what I'd do if I get a pc good enough to play anything better than Shank.

Can't agree with you more, I began to feel I was playing more for Achievements/Trophies and stopped letting myself just enjoy the game for what it is. I loved the fact that the Last of Us has pretty few trophies and that there are no story related trophies except for completing the game, was fantastic to completely miss the "Trophy Unlocked" thing while playing

Opting out of achievements might be a good idea, especially game specific ones. It would be nice if they showed you the list of possible achievements and followed that with "Do you want achievements turned on for this game? (This feature can be activated, or removed at any time)

Steam cards on the other hand are fun in the whole "Trading cards with friends" In order to get complete sets, or in my case, selling extra cards, and using that ill gotten gain to buy the ones you are missing, and never financing said desires with actual, 9 to 5 money.

For me, they're a thing to do when I want to do a thing and I've finished the game proper, so I like them.

I also love when they're used creatively, like a certain joke in Portal 2.

Achievements and trophies are only as good as the developer that designs them.

Achievements have always just been aimed at OCD people who think achievements matter, or in the rare case where a game gives a reward worth having for them. Like a character skin or sometimes you get a mount in games like WoW. The other people (IE Most of us) just don't care and ignore them. There is one achievement I got for this weird thing I did in Bioshock with no idea that doing it would get me one. So when I got the achievement I found it sort of funny, that was the first, and last, time I ever enjoyed getting one.

For me it hit the nail on the head when I heard about the Snidely Whiplash and On a Pale Horse achievements in Red Dead. I could see a couple people doing the Snidely thing just for a laugh here and there, but the Pale Horse? Maybe 1 in a thousand players would even bother trying that but because it is an achievement I saw a bunch of friends attempting it. When I asked why they were bothering their answer was literally, "because it is an achievement". They weren't doing it for fun, they weren't doing it because as part of the gameplay they thought of trying it, they were doing it just so they could get a check mark on a list.

In open world games like Saint's Row I always play the "how long can I last against the cops game" but I do it for fun, achievements for the most part are the opposite of fun. They are gaming by checklist, you know what I do by checklist, it's called a job and it isn't very fun.

As for steam cards, little better, if at all. How about we go retro and start playing games for fun again instead of a stupid gimmick? Crazy I know.

@aguststef: Achievements are fine provided they're challenging or difficult in some respect; trophies that just take time to acquire are effectively meaningless but so is almost any collectible in a video game.

Most of the time I don't care, but for whatever reason, I have a compulsion to get at least 900 points in every Halo game.

People who actively rally against achievements have some serious priorities they need to sort out.

I like them as a document or record of the games I've played, when I completed them, etc. I usually don't go out of my way to get them though, unless its a game I really enjoy playing and then I'll do it because its fun, not out of some completionist compulsion. Examples are Assassin's Creed II, Far Cry 3, games where it was fun to just run around in the world and play every little corner it had to offer.

I liked when achievements encouraged me to explore the different modes in a game, I enjoyed getting all of the points or trophies in games I really love, and I thought it was fun when they would use them to encourage you to play a different way. I just don't think they are designed very well anymore. I see a lot of collectibles in games that aren't suited for them, I see lots of trophies asking for you to replay the game multiple times, tons of achievements which require a massive time investment, but don't require any skill. It really just kills them for me.

Enough games came out with meaningless or easy achievements. This devalued all game achievements and made the whole system less interesting.

I think they're alright mostly. They just need to be implemented better in games. I they make achievements for doing dumb repetitive stuff people are going to spend time doing that. Achievements instead should actually mean something. Pressing A through a story campaign really isn't much of an achievement. Neither is collecting random trash items strewn about haphazardly throughout the level.

I still sort of like them, but recently i've stop giving a shit. Although COD4 had the best set of achievements, All single player,

No Multiplayer Achievement Why? because it's that GOOD.