SO ACHIEVEMENT POINTS, HUH?  I realize that this subject has been done to death by just about everyone out there, and I really don't have anything new to add to the conversation.  This post is mostly for my own benefit - an attempt to clarify my own opinions to myself, rather than convert others to my view.  The thing is, I like achievements.  I like earning them, and I like seeing number increase.  But at the same time, I'm frequently annoyed with them, and I'm concerned that they're taking a lot of the fun and relaxation out of my hobby and turning it into a chore.  Occasionally, I even wonder if a mandatory incentive/reward system negatively impacts game design as a whole.
 
Chasing points is what it is - if it's something you enjoy, then more power to you.  I enjoy comparing point totals on a game-by-game basis with my friends, and when Street Fighter IV came out my buddy and I definitely had a contest going to see who could rack up the most points - but most of the time, my friends and I aren't all playing the same games, at least not at the same time.  In addition, my total score is almost meaningless.  I keep my 360 friends list pretty small, and the relative rankings among my friend (in terms of total points earned) hasn't really changed since I got the system.  The total score really is just a function of how long you've had the system, how much time and money you can devote to buying and playing new games, and how much you care about going out of your way to get points.  Comparing points with a larger community is even more meaningless.  Not only does the enormous sample size almost guarantee you that your personal totals will be locked in statistical mediocrity, but the prevalence of point hacking means that all point totals have to be, to some degree, suspect.
 
So if the community aspect of achievements is pointless (puns! HAHA!), I think the only entertainment to be derived from them has to be on a purely personal level.  But what enjoyment is there in grinding out a tedious task to earn an arbitrary point value?  I'm playing Dead Space 2 right now, and stomping every necromorph I see in order to get the achievement for dismembering 2,500 limbs.  While busting open an alien corpse to pick up ammo is fun to some extent, being told to do it x number of times is an unnecessary chore - how about I only do it when I feel like it, rather than compulsively?  I think I spent close to an hour trying to get If They Came to Hear Me Beg in Halo: Reach.  Why, exactly?
 
Occasionally developers will use achievements to encourage behavior from the player.  For example, Civilization: Revolution used them to encourage experimenting with victory conditions and playing with various civilizations, and Mass Effect used them to promote playing with different party members or classes.  I used to think this was a good use of achievements, but now I'm not so sure.  I ended up getting an S-rank in the first Mass Effect and a near-S-rank in Mass Effect 2 (that is, everything except playing through on Insanity), and spamming biotics isn't very fun.  Space racist/religious fanatic Ashley Williams is awful, so it's a good thing there's an achievement for playing through most of the game with her!  Otherwise I might have role-played and just left her on the ship to clean the zero-G toilets.
 
I think the most damning thing about the entire achievement system is that the games I end up playing or enjoying the most are ones that I play without any regard for points.  While I got most of the points in ME1 and ME2, the majority of those came either on my first run through the game or on dedicated point-farming runs.  Most of the time, I was just playing through again for the sheer hell of it - either to try a different-gender Shepard, or because I missed some planets my first time through, or because I wanted to do back-to-back runs through both games in order to have a "canon" save file to bring over into ME3 when it comes out.  Most of the coverage I saw for Pac-Man Championship Edition DX contained something along the lines of "I almost wish the achievements were harder so there was more incentive to play it."  Oddly enough, I've been playing it more than any game in the past couple weeks, despite S-ranking it on the first day I got, simply because it's fun.
 
Achievements aren't going anywhere though, no matter what objections some people have, and it looks like more and more games are incorporating them, even on platforms like the PC, where there's no overarching system in place (save Steam, of course).  I almost admire Nintendo for resisting the tide, but I suspect it's less of a conscious, principled decision on their part and more a case of being out of touch with things like the Internet.

SO ACHIEVEMENT POINTS, HUH?  I realize that this subject has been done to death by just about everyone out there, and I really don't have anything new to add to the conversation.  This post is mostly for my own benefit - an attempt to clarify my own opinions to myself, rather than convert others to my view.  The thing is, I like achievements.  I like earning them, and I like seeing number increase.  But at the same time, I'm frequently annoyed with them, and I'm concerned that they're taking a lot of the fun and relaxation out of my hobby and turning it into a chore.  Occasionally, I even wonder if a mandatory incentive/reward system negatively impacts game design as a whole.
 
Chasing points is what it is - if it's something you enjoy, then more power to you.  I enjoy comparing point totals on a game-by-game basis with my friends, and when Street Fighter IV came out my buddy and I definitely had a contest going to see who could rack up the most points - but most of the time, my friends and I aren't all playing the same games, at least not at the same time.  In addition, my total score is almost meaningless.  I keep my 360 friends list pretty small, and the relative rankings among my friend (in terms of total points earned) hasn't really changed since I got the system.  The total score really is just a function of how long you've had the system, how much time and money you can devote to buying and playing new games, and how much you care about going out of your way to get points.  Comparing points with a larger community is even more meaningless.  Not only does the enormous sample size almost guarantee you that your personal totals will be locked in statistical mediocrity, but the prevalence of point hacking means that all point totals have to be, to some degree, suspect.
 
So if the community aspect of achievements is pointless (puns! HAHA!), I think the only entertainment to be derived from them has to be on a purely personal level.  But what enjoyment is there in grinding out a tedious task to earn an arbitrary point value?  I'm playing Dead Space 2 right now, and stomping every necromorph I see in order to get the achievement for dismembering 2,500 limbs.  While busting open an alien corpse to pick up ammo is fun to some extent, being told to do it x number of times is an unnecessary chore - how about I only do it when I feel like it, rather than compulsively?  I think I spent close to an hour trying to get If They Came to Hear Me Beg in Halo: Reach.  Why, exactly?
 
Occasionally developers will use achievements to encourage behavior from the player.  For example, Civilization: Revolution used them to encourage experimenting with victory conditions and playing with various civilizations, and Mass Effect used them to promote playing with different party members or classes.  I used to think this was a good use of achievements, but now I'm not so sure.  I ended up getting an S-rank in the first Mass Effect and a near-S-rank in Mass Effect 2 (that is, everything except playing through on Insanity), and spamming biotics isn't very fun.  Space racist/religious fanatic Ashley Williams is awful, so it's a good thing there's an achievement for playing through most of the game with her!  Otherwise I might have role-played and just left her on the ship to clean the zero-G toilets.
 
I think the most damning thing about the entire achievement system is that the games I end up playing or enjoying the most are ones that I play without any regard for points.  While I got most of the points in ME1 and ME2, the majority of those came either on my first run through the game or on dedicated point-farming runs.  Most of the time, I was just playing through again for the sheer hell of it - either to try a different-gender Shepard, or because I missed some planets my first time through, or because I wanted to do back-to-back runs through both games in order to have a "canon" save file to bring over into ME3 when it comes out.  Most of the coverage I saw for Pac-Man Championship Edition DX contained something along the lines of "I almost wish the achievements were harder so there was more incentive to play it."  Oddly enough, I've been playing it more than any game in the past couple weeks, despite S-ranking it on the first day I got, simply because it's fun.
 
Achievements aren't going anywhere though, no matter what objections some people have, and it looks like more and more games are incorporating them, even on platforms like the PC, where there's no overarching system in place (save Steam, of course).  I almost admire Nintendo for resisting the tide, but I suspect it's less of a conscious, principled decision on their part and more a case of being out of touch with things like the Internet.

You have great points here.  Great games really don't need achievements, they're great and perfectly enjoyable without them.  But there's something about them that is just satisfying.  When they're well designed they really do serve as a good motivator for me to play more of a game as well.  There have been many games that I have gone back through to get achievements and had a blast playing through again that I probably would not have gone back to without them.

I don't see why you wouldn't always be stomping, anyways.

I'm starting to relax on going for the points.  Right now I'm sitting at 89,000 Gamerscore and I've finally just realized that it's pretty pointless.  I think the best thing is playing a game you enjoy and going for all the achievements if you really love it.  This is what I'm planning on doing from now on.  I'll play a game and if I don't enjoy playing it then I'll stop playing it.  Time is way more of an issue than anything else in my life right now so I think I should probably spend it on the games that deserve it.