Are Achievements\Trophies important to a game?

[Yumil]

There are only 2 ways story achievements are any good:
1. You have a lot of friends that play the same game and like to talk about them. The story splits up and it's hard to tell what's spoilers, achievements like in ME and ME2 help easily tell what a player has or hasn't done.

2. Game splits and you can do 1 of a number of things per play through. Achievements for all of them helps give more incentive to replay the game and take a different route.

[Thadius]

I dare you to find a better achievement than picking up a vorpal halberd and chopping a demon in half.

Baldur's gate: Lets you do that.

Everthing else? Doesn't.

[bluestarultor]

Honestly? My opinion is no, Achievements/Trophies aren't important to a game. At least not a good one. As a recent addition, I think that they can be a nice thing to have, but I also think they can be used as a crutch. It's a delicate balance.

Achievements used to say you went out of your way and did something crazy are great in my book. Stuff like in Red Dead Redemption where you get one for throwing a nun in front of a train says you are one twisted hombre.

On the other hand, one for completing a level with no special conditions or for a first kill is vestigial. They're not bad, but what's the point? You're rewarding the player for not getting bored with your game and putting it down. Doing something once that you'd have to do at least once anyway is not achieving anything.

Ones that reward you for grinding stuff you'd be doing in any amount anyway are what I'd call a bad achievement. By making people do that, all you're doing is lengthening gameplay through repetition. Even then, I'd say there was a sliding scale. If it's a number one could reasonably get through normal play, it's pointless. If they have to go above and beyond a bit, I say they can get a nifty reward for it, and I'd call it a good implementation of a shaky system. If they need to spend as many hours killing the same beast over and over as you have in the main quest, I'd call it a desperate cry for help.

[Aldurin]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

Honestly? My opinion is no, Achievements/Trophies aren't important to a game. At least not a good one. As a recent addition, I think that they can be a nice thing to have, but I also think they can be used as a crutch. It's a delicate balance.

Achievements used to say you went out of your way and did something crazy are great in my book. Stuff like in Red Dead Redemption where you get one for throwing a nun in front of a train says you are one twisted hombre.

On the other hand, one for completing a level with no special conditions or for a first kill is vestigial. They're not bad, but what's the point? You're rewarding the player for not getting bored with your game and putting it down. Doing something once that you'd have to do at least once anyway is not achieving anything.

Ones that reward you for grinding stuff you'd be doing in any amount anyway are what I'd call a bad achievement. By making people do that, all you're doing is lengthening gameplay through repetition. Even then, I'd say there was a sliding scale. If it's a number one could reasonably get through normal play, it's pointless. If they have to go above and beyond a bit, I say they can get a nifty reward for it, and I'd call it a good implementation of a shaky system. If they need to spend as many hours killing the same beast over and over as you have in the main quest, I'd call it a desperate cry for help.

I still like to think of the ancestor of the achievement, the skill point (Spyro 2, Spyro 3, and the entire Insomniac-made Ratchet and Clank series). The spyro ones were like 16 different things ranging from destroy all of one kind of decoration in the environment to doing to beating a challenge a little bit better than required. Those were extra things that took extra effort but did not require monk-like dedication to accomplish.

[Marc v4.0]

Originally Posted by EvilEarl

I still like to think of the ancestor of the achievement, the skill point (Spyro 2, Spyro 3, and the entire Insomniac-made Ratchet and Clank series). The spyro ones were like 16 different things ranging from destroy all of one kind of decoration in the environment to doing to beating a challenge a little bit better than required. Those were extra things that took extra effort but did not require monk-like dedication to accomplish.

There were innumerable games before the Spyro series that used a non-reward reward system for collecting things and acomplishing goals. Some old NES games gave you badges or marks on your save file to note completion of the game or collection tasks.

If you really want to talk about the ancestor of non-reward rewards, then you should be considering the High Score lists in arcades. That is a real ancestor, Spyro and the games before it only built upon that further. Spyro certainly wasn't the first by a long shot.

[Krylo]

@Thad: Not being such a pussy, and just punching one to death?

Also: Achievements are kinda fun/interesting/neat, but I do get tired of the ones that are part of the story line. Like Phil said, it gets to be a bit much when I get one for watching the goddamn opening cinematic. "Congratulations on turning on the game!"

Woo.

However, they do add a good amount of replay value to games.

Take the annoyance of the Nerfnow dude: Chances are Mr. "I'm just rolling pistols for akimbo" would have just not been playing entirely if not for the achievements. If he wasn't bored with the bread and butter of the game (or getting bored of it) he probably wouldn't be trying to spice it up by taking on challenges. The achievements just provide friendly suggestions as to what challenges you should take on.

Of course in multiplayer games the line blurs a bit, as you're annoying other players in your quest to amuse yourself, which, I guess, just kind of makes you a jackass if you keep getting your team wiped in an attempt to earn an achievement.

Maybe multiplayer achievements shouldn't exist? In most PC games people will just load into a server designated for achievements, anyway, and cheese their way to it.

[Ravashak]

Originally Posted by Krylo

Also: Achievements are kinda fun/interesting/neat, but I do get tired of the ones that are part of the story line. Like Phil said, it gets to be a bit much when I get one for watching the goddamn opening cinematic. "Congratulations on turning on the game!"

Assassin's Creed 2, "you've pressed 4 buttons when prompted, congratulations!"

Yeah, things get silly then. I tend to try and get most achievements in games I play, unless they require pvp (for essentially single player games, just don't like that in general), or are just incredible time sinks (example: FF13's "possessed all items", aka, go grind a lot)

[Jagos]

Originally Posted by Krylo

@Thad: Not being such a pussy, and just punching one to death?

Also: Achievements are kinda fun/interesting/neat, but I do get tired of the ones that are part of the story line. Like Phil said, it gets to be a bit much when I get one for watching the goddamn opening cinematic. "Congratulations on turning on the game!"

Woo.

However, they do add a good amount of replay value to games.

Take the annoyance of the Nerfnow dude: Chances are Mr. "I'm just rolling pistols for akimbo" would have just not been playing entirely if not for the achievements. If he wasn't bored with the bread and butter of the game (or getting bored of it) he probably wouldn't be trying to spice it up by taking on challenges. The achievements just provide friendly suggestions as to what challenges you should take on.

Of course in multiplayer games the line blurs a bit, as you're annoying other players in your quest to amuse yourself, which, I guess, just kind of makes you a jackass if you keep getting your team wiped in an attempt to earn an achievement.

Maybe multiplayer achievements shouldn't exist? In most PC games people will just load into a server designated for achievements, anyway, and cheese their way to it.

I'm not sure if achievements work that way...

Usually a person goes to get the achievement in the MIDDLE of playing a game. They're not necessarily pro, they may be average or just got the game and they try to get the achievement much to everyone's chagrin.

At least, that's what I see with Valve games.

I'd understand if they waited until they were pro but honestly, who does that?

So I think they're pretty debilitating to an involving or rewarding game experience, and downright dangerous to the obsessive completist personalities often attracted to games.

Yes, very dangerous...

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Jagos

I'm not sure if achievements work that way...

Usually a person goes to get the achievement in the MIDDLE of playing a game. They're not necessarily pro, they may be average or just got the game and they try to get the achievement much to everyone's chagrin.

At least, that's what I see with Valve games.

I'd understand if they waited until they were pro but honestly, who does that?

Works like what? Like going to a dedicated server?

'Cause yeah, it's Valve games this is most prevalent in, so I don't know what you've been doing.

It doesn't have to be all super official, either. Just some people run a server and dedicate it to getting achievements, and then instead of trying to win, everyone helps each other get achievements (that would normally be nigh impossible), by doing things, like, say, standing still while the pyro hadokens them.

This serves the dual purpose of getting people their achievements and making sure that pyros aren't wasting perfectly good backburner moments on a less reliable hadoken kill, or whatever other stupid thing they have set as an achievement.

The downside is that it completely negates the purpose of the achievements in the first place.

If you're talking about going back to play later, or to prolong play... well then I don't even know where to begin arguing. It's something new to do, and, yeah, if someone gets akimbo during normal play, well great on them. However people who haven't gotten akimbo yet and are getting bored of the game are going to--if they have any interest in continuing to play--decide, well, hell, maybe limiting myself to pistols in an attempt to get this achievement would make the game fun for me again.

It's not a hard concept to understand, and people continuing to play a game they'd normally be done with just to get an achievement is the entire reason WoW has them, for instance.

[krogothwolf]

Well, the other thing I was thinking of is.

Red Dead Redemption. It has all those Challenges to do in the game, completing them unlocks something usually. But then, you get an a trophy for doing that, it seems a bit overkill.

"Congrats, you just unlocked this new outfit." Bing "Trophy Unlock, You got Item for doing stuff!"

It really bugs me. Plus the story ones make sense in an effort to keep track, but it would be better if they gave em like 1 point only. Honestly, 90% of mine are just from doing stuff I do anyways.

I never thought of multiplayer ones causing issue, but now I can see why. I usually just play multiplayer with friends so we don't really care about them. But yeah, trying to beat a game then getting whipped because some guy tried to get some trophy would drive me nuts.