Have Achievements Ruined Games for You?

I find that they can have a negative effect on a game for me, personally. Just curious if anyone else agrees. Sometimes I'll actually prefer to game on a console just because it has achievements. I know that sounds silly, but it's just how it is.

Also, hello, I'm new here :D

No, for me, it's largely an improvement.

Also, most PC games from the last decade have achievements...

I dont miss them if they are gone but I do enjoy them if they reward goals I used to set for myself anyway like no kills or detections etc.

The flip side of that though is that by explicitly rewarding that stuff but not always with the best tracking it can turn the fun of a "ghost" run of Thief which you monitor just by going "well no one ever got alarmed, spotted or chased me. I ghosted it" into something that Dishonored suffered from (still one of my favourite games though) which is "wait someone saw a body and voided my achievement? When and how?"

The strictness of achievements can spoil a bit of the momentum one would have doing a ghost where you are your only judge.

So what exactly makes it negative? Chosing to play a game on a console doesn't seem all that negative, unless you're feeling like you're missing out on graphical fidelity or something.

Personally it hasn't really changed much for me, I used to actually quite enjoy the notification of getting an achievement back on the 360, but these days the novelty has worn off to the point that I hardly pay attention to it anymore.

I used to care and not want to play games that didn't have them, but I've gotten so burned out on it at this point that it doesn't matter to me anymore. It might also have something to do with my switch from 360 to PS4 at the start of the generation that let me break free. I went from a shitload of them to almost none.

I just recently found myself having somewhat of a conundrum with achievements. I like achievements. I don't obsess over them, but even this year there's been games (yes, plural) that I ended up hunting down all the achievements because I enjoyed the game. However with the two recent releases of Hob and Steamworld Dig 2 I found that the choice of achievements bummed me out.

Those games are the perfect example of the types of games I really enjoy achievement hunting in, but they both had achievements that required stuff like replaying the game several times, speed running or some sort of challenge playthrough. With achievements like that making it take way too much effort to "finish the hunt" I just lose interest in hunting down any achievements at all. So in a way, instead of having the achievements encourage me to keep playing the game longer they ruined the extra legs the game could've had.

First off, hello! :D

Secondly, nah. I've always played games the way I wanted. If I wind up getting one, I'll look to see what it is, but they don't even cross my mind while I'm actually playing. I guess that's a byproduct of playing games before they even existed. It's only recently that I've paid them any attention, and that's only because I figured I might as well platinum at least one game on my PS3.

So I'm gonna do a second playthrough of Sonic Generations, a game I adore, in order to snatch up the 2 trophies I'm missing. Then I'm going to go right back to ignoring them. No harm done.

I no longer care about achievements/trophies. When I did, it lead to some things like replaying an Uncharted game more than I would have otherwise. I never played a King Kong or Hannah Montana equivalent, just because the trophies/achievements were easy to get.

Probably the closest thing is when a trophy/achievement is misable, and I didn't realize it until later. Like Persona 4: Golden has a trophy that involves reading all of the books in the game. The description makes it sound simply, but in reality there a couple of books you only receive based on certain conditions (and it just so happened, I didn't trigger those one or two events, in a 100 hour game). Another one that comes to mind is the Daedric artifact achievement in Skyrim. The way you are supposed to earn that trophy is to actually get all of the items, not just complete the quests. So of course there's one quest that has one outcome where you don't end up with the item. Stuff like that just bums me out, especially when I was putting in work to get all of the achievements/trophies. With both of those cases, I thought about replaying the game just to hunt for the couple of achievements I missed, but (thankfully) decided against it.

Sometimes.

If I see an achievement is gettable by doing something just beyond what I would normally do, I'll go for it. This has led me down some dark paths of annoyance though which can be to the detriment to my overall experience.

I'll also occasionally mop up achievements either prior to a point of no return, or post game. This is a bad idea on both counts, prior to the point of no return really just takes you away from a story you've been following. Post game can bring you back to a game to do a boring a repetitive task which may have you forgetting why you liked it in the first place.

I definitely get a little pavlovian burst of joy every time I hear the noise and see the little box pop in, but I don't think trophies/achievements are quite what they used to be. They seem to be steadily fading into the background.

I've recently embarked on a journey to get all the Platinum Trophies in Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 and I feel like I'm going to hate myself by the end of it.

@beachthunder said:

You're making me feel super old thx I thought it was still 2007

My favorite achievements are the ones that push you to do something out of the ordinary in games that I have finished, but want an excuse to keep playing in the world.

Other than that I prefer to turn off notifications because I find it takes me out of the experience while I'm trying to watch a cutscene and the notification pops up.

At worst, achievements are just ignorable. Often, though, I enjoy looking over an achievement list just to see if there's something I can do that isn't too out of the way. With very few exceptions I haven't had the compulsion to ever 100% something, but achievements are often a nice little bonus that vary the gameplay with miniature sort of meta-goals that I can enjoy. They've really never been actively detrimental to my gaming experience - aside from the odd game here and there where I complete a game and have nearly none, which could be a bummer.

Nah, as far as I'm concerned it's just a quick way to track "progress", not really different than the old % trackers in something like Crash Bandicoot. If I really like a game I'll try to get as many achievements as possible, but I never force myself to get any either.

I really wish they'd figure out how to do good screenshots though. All the story-based trophy notifications in FFXV popped up on really memorable, well framed parts of cutscenes, but then looking back at the screenshots they were all black screens or blurry shit. Was kind of a bummer.

Resonance of Fate had the best use of achievement art I've seen. Filling in a picture for story progress is weirdly rewarding.

Not at all. I don't really care for them but I do check each game's achievements to get an idea of what would be "achievable" or fun to get during a play through.

Brutal Legend had some good one's where you had to ride a motorcycle over a woolly mammoth or ride a pig off a cliff.

For some reason though I prefer achievements to trophies. Something about that achievement ping sound that is so pleasant compared to trophies. Also I don't like the rating of platinum, gold, silver & bronze for trophies, I wish they'd just do away with that tbh.

So I was primarily a PS3 guy last gen and didn't care at all about achievements. This gen I got into achievements like crazy, mostly because I was playing a greater number of games and kept seeing that number go up. Went down some dark roads in 2014-2015, only playing Xbox games and mostly playing games with easy achievements. I got the full 1000 in games like King Kong, IDarb (which had you scanning QR codes or something), countless other bad games. It was an obsession for a while.

Now, I'm totally over it. Achievements can be fun, but they don't hamper or increase my enjoyment of a game at all really. Hearing that sound of them popping is still a Pavlovian pleasure, but beyond that I'm not going to waste time on them if they aren't fun to unlock. I would say achievements have the potential to ruin games for people, and developers should be careful about what kind of behavior they want to encourage by the goals they set.

@rebel_scum trophies have never felt right to me either, the tiers are kinda dumb. It makes it feel pointless to get any trophies unless you go for the full platinum, which isn't something I ever really want to do. And the sound effect just isn't as satisfying.

I'm kind of broken on games without achievements, but as long as they're there I don't care what they are.

No, I've always ignored them

I think the only time achievements have had a negative impact on games for me is when they unintentionally spoil stuff, like if an achievement named "Betrayal!" pops up at the very start of a scene where you are betrayed. Otherwise, I largely ignore them and sometimes use their names and icons as hints for finding secrets that I might have missed. Beyond that, achievements feel as inconsequential as points in a NES game and you don't even get extra lives out of them.

They don't and have never mattered to me in the slightest, but steam has achievements so you don't have to game on console just for that lol.

No. When I got my 360 I turned off achievement notifications and never turned them back on. Same for PS4 trophies. If you feel like they harm your experience, just do the same.

I think they're useful for remembering what you've done in a game and that's about it.

Largely an improvement TBH. I don't obsess over them, so missing them isn't a big deal (thought getting to the end of Tomb Raider and realising I missed one optional conversation that I even tried to trigger, so ended up with one missing [single player] achievement kinda sucked), and it's a fun layer of challenge for games that I love anyway.

I've definitely played some trash just for achievements, but doing so has also broadened my horizons and led me to some truly incredible games I might have otherwise overlooked (it's how I first became aware of Steins;Gate, for instance), so I'd say even that it at worse a net neutral.

Nah, unlike lockboxes, "progression" and loadouts and all that stuff, it's a trend that you can ignore if you aren't into it.

I just disable trophy/achievement notifications, sadly there's rarely a way to disable the other things I mentioned.

I wouldn't miss them if they where gone. I think that achievements where prominent for me on 360, once i got a PS3, and Steam started doing them they started meaning nothing for me. I have no interest in maintaining some sort of arbitrary score or level it's not why i play games.

I don't really care that much about them on a overall scale, like I don't care about my trophy level on PS4 or my total number of achievements on steam. However, with games that I especially enjoy, I will often take the time to get all the trophies/achievements. I think they're a cool way to extend a game you like, but the whole meta level idea of amassing a ton of achievements or trophies isn't that appealing.

The only game that I even cared about achievements for was World of Warcraft.

At first it was fun and they drove me to complete some hard challenges; but due to the evolving nature of the game, there came a point in which my main character class was no longer viable, this kind of stuff was know to happen and an accepted part of the game, pre achievements I would just start playing another character, it wasn't a big deal, but walking away from all that work I put in on my Moonkin was too much, it was part of the reason I stopped playing the game.

I used to go all-in hunting and scrapping for trophies. Now, it's just a nice way to keep me playing a game for longer than I would have otherwise. I will say, though, I do find some difficulty in playing games on PC or Switch when I know it's not contributing to some overarching score/progression metric.

Same for me - I don't look at the list of achievements/trophies before I finish the game, but once the credits roll, I pull the list up and if the rest seem reasonable (and I enjoyed the game) it's great to have more goals to pursue.

I never paid attention to achievement score. It sounds like most of the horror stories around achievements in the early days were around getting your gamer score up by playing terrible games for easy points etc...

I generally like achievements. They can often be a good way to point players towards content or different ways to play a game. Skyrim and Fallout achievements are a great checklist for making sure you see the cool quests in a game. Some of the few examples of AAA games were I go for everything in a game. There are many types of achievements I avoid because they don't suit my play style. Multiplayer, harder difficulties, and challenge mode achievements are the ones I usually ignore. I like exploration and collection the best.

i had the fever for a spell. but these days i don't care so much.

I used to be really into achievements, but I found that I often enjoyed games less by going for them. Now I barely even look at achievements, I occasionally glance at one when I get one but that is about it.

Quite the opposite, they have made games offer even more activities to strive for when playing. I don't care about the total points I have and comparing them to others, but it feels good going through and attempting most of the achievements a game has.

99% of the time I ignore achievements in games, although I must say that I enjoy the little chime when they do happen.

I think they are a net positive because all they do is add more variety to a game. If you don't want that ignore them and just play the game how you want. For every one else they add extra challenges, push you to play in other ways, and give you external goals' all adding up to more reasons to play a game.

It bums me out that NIntendo has ignored them for so long because I think a lot of their games are perfect for them and I would feel more compelled to replay them. I'm finding myself debating on where to buy certain indie games because I like being able to play them on the Switch in handheld mode but I value, the aforementioned, benefits in trophies on the PS4.

If I really love a game, achievements give me incentive to do things I otherwise wouldn't after finishing the game. They can be implemented poorly in some games but overall I think they're a good.

Granted, I don't play a lot of multiplayer games, but I've found lootboxes to be super ignorable. I've never had the need to be on the cutting edge of progression and I have zero faith in randomness to pay out. For this reason I've never been a gambler, but I understand there are people who this is a real problem for.

The only "gotcha" mechanics I've gotten into don't require a real money pay in, like Smash Bros trophies. I got frustrated very early on over loot drops in WoW and decided that I wasn't going to put myself through that anymore. Even a plinko game in Nintendo's Miitomo app using currency earned in game drove me to pull my hair out. No way I'm putting real money into a system like that.

I'd actually say I miss them when they're gone; they often give me a reason to replay a game or play through a game in a way that I wouldn't normally (i.e. mixing up weapons instead of just using the one I decide I like the most, etc.).

@chizzle10: I used to pay attention to them when the 360 first launched and when Sony introduced trophies but over time I've almost forgotten they even exist, to the point of when one pops up I think, "oh yeah, those things".

I got the Platinum trophy in Injustice 2 recently...shew....
Its one of the few games I've went out of my way to get.. Normally I just play the game naturally and get what I get.

No. I don't care if a game doesn't have achievements.

I got the last achievement in Max Payne 3 a week ago, after playing it for years. Everything you just said. There are only a few games I've done this with. The sense of satisfaction was, as always, pretty brief, as I quickly remembered how unimportant it is.

I enjoy them, but only for what they are. They aren't some score of your "gamerattitude" or anything like that, especially because people almost always cheat the system in some way if they're competitive achievement hunters anyway. I know they caused a LOT of wasted time for Jeff, Ryan, etc for quite a long time, and they certainly regret it.

They're only good if you don't obsess over them, like almost anything I guess!

I think Platinum trophies are neat, but I don't worry about getting them.

Welcome to the forums new duder. Newder? Nuder?


I used to be addicted to them, lost sleep, bought bad games just to get them, dedicated hours and days and weeks to getting a meaningless number slightly bigger.
I got over that eventually though and could give no shit about them now.

At this point the only way I might go for one, is if it's tied to something in the game that might unlock something (kill zombies, get a weapon, Dead Rising) which I would do anyways regardless. Or if I love the game so much I just want to 100% everything and leave no rock unturned, which is super rare (Bloodborne).

I’m only reminded of their existance when I get a notification on the screen from doing something completely mandatory in a game, so not really.

Back on 360/PS3, I was way into achievements on 360 but wasn't as concerned with the trophies on PS3 since the 360 was my primary console (granted I also had way more time to waste going back and getting them)

Once I switched to the PS4 being my primary (I also have an One) the roll switched to where I don't really care about my achievements now as much as I do my trophies. (Funny enough I don't care in the slightest about my Steam achievements)

I will generally try to get as many trophies as possible when playing games, but I won't kill myself doing it. For example, I've got Platinums on all the Uncharted (both PS3 & PS4) but I love those games and some of the trophies gave me new objectives. I loved the new Ratchet and Clank and after my playthrough I was sitting at 75%. I haven't played it since I finished it and that's fine. The first Mordor, I'm missing 1 trophy, but I wasn't inclined enough to go back and get it. Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider I have all single player trophies but no multiplayer/time trial stuff. I have like 25 platinums, but at least 8 of those are Telltale games and 8 for Uncharted (3 on PS3 & 5 on PS4),

So I enjoy them, but I don't brag about them to friends or anything. I do them because it gives me something else to do. I guess for me it just depends on the game.

100%ing everything is just a dumb way to go typically; but there's certainly games where the achievements make it more fun/challenging and that's the idea; just avoid garbage achievements like Telltale games or whatever.

I like trophies on Playstation, I am level 20 and have amassed over 3000 of them. I dont usually go out of my way to get them though.

Nah. I kind of like it when I get all the achievements in a game, but I've actually done that maybe the half-dozen times I've played games that just give you them all in the course of the single player campaign. Sometimes, if I see I'm really close to getting one that doesn't take much, I'll go for it, but those that require tens of hours of grinding or beating a game on exxxtreemmmee difficulty don't interest me in the least.