Over-Achievers Comments by Simon Parkin

Now I know why you call yourself mong.

call me old school but I'm not really bothered about acheivements, I did get 1000/1000 in King Kong though ...

MrED209: My point is that some of what makes WoW great to others – and not to me – is the way you can compare yourself against another person vis-a-vis your level. Since I don't particularly care how I rate against others, or against the game itself, this has little appeal for me. Sometimes, if I'm bored, I might try and get a high-score on Outrun or Space Invaders Extreme, but there's not much in the way compelling me to do this.

Answer the question!

Yes, I got it. If you didn't get it yet, then that means you won't get it. I guess that means preordering a second copy, or having to wait until it's out. Sucks for you.

@Darren
I lost interest in Achievements about two years ago when I realised that they were actually distracting me from enjoying and playing the games normally.

Yep, sometimes they just prove a drain on the enjoyment, the "Kill 100,000 enemies whilst backflipping off a trash can" or "Complete a 10 minute section without taking damage" style achievements have actually put me off playing games. I'm a bit of a completion-ist and if I know I can't complete something then I often can't be bothered starting it.

I personally like achievements that unlock naturally during the course of the game, for finishing chapters, beating bosses, getting equipment and so on. I don't like missible ones (especially collection ones where areas can't be re-entered) or branching achievements, where you can only get one of several per playthrough, Ninja Gaiden is the worst offender there, requiring about 8 playthroughs to get all the achievements, that's frankly unreasonable, IMO. Mass Effect was poor too, requiring 3 playthroughs minimum to unlock 1000 points. When I realised that it sapped the fun for me, it became work.

Since then I've largely just ignored achievements, if they unlock cool but I'm not gonna waste my time standing in a field slaughtering Gribxox to get the "Killed 15,000 Gribxox in a row" achievement. Still haven't finished Mass Effect though, that left a sour taste in my mouth.

Anyone who doesn't "get" achievements: they're just another type of reward for gaming, they provide positive reinforcement, an acknowledgement that you've achieved something (well fancy that ;) ). Just a mechanism where the game says "nice one". A basic knowledge of human behaviour will tell you that people who feel rewarded by an activity will be more inclined to continue with that activity. It's the reason people play games, you feel enjoyment and rewarded for your time. Achievement whoring is just chasing that reward, people do that kind of thing all the time, the same as going for the high score or trying to complete a game 100%.

most poorly implemented achievement i've found was probably Soul Calibur 4 when i got 5gp for switching the game on

I would disagree. Dynasty Warriors gives you 20 points the first time you save the game.

Yes, I got it. If you didn't get it yet, then that means you won't get it. I guess that means preordering a second copy, or having to wait until it's out. Sucks for you.

Are you telling me I preorded it for nothing, is that what your telling me.

FFXI isnt THAT bad. The first job to 75 will take a loooong time. After that, the process is speeded up considerably by better knowledge of the game... and more money :P Sure, it's probably still the hardest one in the list. But there are plenty of people out there with Maat's Cap (the ingame recognition of having levelled 15 of the games current 20 jobs to 70+). Most of those will of course be on PC... not sure if there is anyone with the full set of achievements on 360.

@Domovoi: Sorry to burst your bubble, but I think that achievement is a viral one - so you get one for killing anyone who has ever killed anyone who has ever killed anyone who's killed a dev, and someone else would get it for killing you. I too got it on my first kill when GTA was free for a week.

Achievements are so well implemented. So says my PS3 owning brother-in-law when he came round to play GW:RE2 recently.

Why put yourself through hell trying to reach a number that means squat?

@sneetch
i thought the mass effect achievements were great. the game gets much better on the harder difficulties, and i probably wouldn't have touched them if it wasn't for the achievements. much like the whole 'dark side'/'light side' aspect. as much as i enjoyed KOTOR, i gave up a few hours into my 'dark side' playthrough. by using the achievements, mass effect had that tiniest of incentive for me to commit to playing the game through that second or third time, and once you get past the tedious citadel section, the game is its own reward.

i think of achievements as ways of the developer flagging up parts of their game that you might otherwise miss. you could argue that good game design would do that for you regardless, but good game design is hard to find and achievements can be done by the work experience boy.

@midnight_walker: Seriously? That'd be dissapointing, but hey, free achievement. I do wonder why it says "Kill a Rockstar developer in a ranked multiplayer match" though, instead of "Kill somebody who has this achievement"?

I enjoyed many of the achievements in Fable 2. It's the only game I've ever played where you get rewarded for setting up an orgy, or getting a town full of people pissed. Fallout 3 is the only game I own where I've got all of the available achievements, including the DLC stuff, but that just has more to do with the fact that I love the game so much that I've been everywhere and done everything regardless of the achievements. I've come close on Call of Duty 4 too (I'm not doing that epilogue mission on Veteran difficulty, it's just too frustrating), which also had a couple of interesting ones.

Half-Life and Portal are interesting beasts. As I only play Half-Life games on PC I've only had the opportunity to get achievements in Episode 2, and unfortunately back when it was released the achievements didn't seem to be stored on a central server anywhere - so as soon as Windows needed re-installing, the next time I played the game all of the achievements were wiped clean. But even though there was no gamerscore, I still made an effort to get some of them because of how entertaining they were.

The article is spot-on really - good, creative achievements bring their own rewards and encourage you to play in different ways. And there are some really, really bad ones too. I'm looking at you, Rockstar!

It seems weird when people complain about achievements, It seems like a legitimate hobby to me the same as someone that likes pinning butterflies to boards or collecting thimbles. To a lot of people that seems really pointless but no less pointless(ha) than having a number next to your gamertag. I will admit to playing shitty games for points, but I will also admit that I have noticed that sometimes it can make you fonder of games. crackdown was "alright for a bit" but with its achievements it becomes a truly, truly brilliant game. I like how it lengthens the game. mass effect becomes better on multiple playthroughs and I enjoyed mirrors edge (meh) a lot more playing it through on hard , something I would have never had any intention of doing without achievemenst. The only real problem is when you stop having fun (ac flags) and know when to just play a game because you enjoy, something I thought had happened for a while until cod4 where I would play it for days without any "reward" in sight. now I play a lot of sfiv Im glad that im doign that rather than getting 2 billion headshots while falling off a bridge or whatever.

as someone else mentioned ... ratchets skill points (and spyro's) are really, really interesting and insomniac seemed to have perfected achievement points waaaaayyyy before anyone else did..

also... trophy system is broken I'm at level 5 or so and other than some obsesive stardusting and unchartedinging I just cant get into son'ys system

MrED209: My point is that some of what makes WoW great to others – and not to me – is the way you can compare yourself against another person vis-a-vis your level. Since I don't particularly care how I rate against others, or against the game itself, this has little appeal for me. Sometimes, if I'm bored, I might try and get a high-score on Outrun or Space Invaders Extreme, but there's not much in the way compelling me to do this.

So I suppose the fact that you can only progress in the game by levelling up has nothing to do with why people level up? Sorry, but what on earth are you talking about?

I agree about the violin thing actually, its just a side mission just like all the other side missions it isn't really made different by it being an achievement. Psychotic Prankster is the best one, I didn't even know it was possible to do that until going through the list.

MrED209: Inbuilt to the appeal of MMOs is the idea of gradually becoming more powerful than the next guy through levelling up and gaining phat loot. I'm assuming that people don't just play to level up, because it's the only way to progress, but because they also enjoy it and get something out of it. This significant aspect of MMOs, of 'bragging rights', doesn't hold much for me, and so the MMO genre, as a whole, leaves me feeling rather cold. Likewise, I don't have much time for gamerscores, in so far as they can be used as a vehicle for bragging rights. For those who engage with gamerscores in this way, fine; I'm just not too bothered about it, personally.

If you still don't get my point, then I'm sorry, because I don't think I can explain it any clearer.

i know people that do both believe it or not

"most poorly implemented achievement i've found was probably Soul Calibur 4 when i got 5gp for switching the game on

I would disagree. Dynasty Warriors gives you 20 points the first time you save the game."

i think one of the madden games i played also had an achievement for turning the game on. IMO that's worse than first save, although not by much....

No one doesnt have to really like the Achievement or feel that you are forced to play the game a certain way, just play game for fun!

Very well written article that recognised the value that the system brings and how its being copied (sure MS wasnt first), I have said previously and I ll say again. This gamerscore and achievements system have added value and created new way of playing games that I would NEVER have tried to do so previously.

Play on a more difficult mode or play as evil character, and missed out a lot from the games. Check out my gamerscore, I do not have many 1000/1000 as I m NOT going to grind my way to get 1000. I only play as long as I m interested or its fun.

There are lots of example where it really worked and others that its fallen flat on its face. Devs are more creative and challenging gamers to do more. For me switching off Achievement would be in a way to deny yourself chance to play the game in a certain way? Forget the idea collections quests or getting a full skillsets, I m referring to being encouraged to do better and trying to play a game a bit differently.

Believe you me, that the Achievement/Trophy is now here to stay and will exist in one form or another from this generation onwards.

I might have missed this, but has anybody commented on that guy's gamerscore yet - 311,000 or something?? HOLY FUCK!!

I put in reasonable hours on my machine and I'm at around 6,000 I think. That guy must have no life whatsoever. Seriously, he must be have been putting in 80 or 90 hours a week since the 360 came out.

I'm both a lover and a hater of achievements. They're a bit like a drug, once you've got that buzz you have to go back for more, and a lot of the time you find yourself doing things you really don't enjoy just for the buzz of the Achievement. Gaming should be about fun, and sometimes, not always, but sometimes Achievements distract from that badly.

@ Negotiator: If that's your best attempt at a witty retort than I can only assume you haven't received your Fight Night demo because GOD HATES YOU.

"I put in reasonable hours on my machine and I'm at around 6,000 I think"

Really! I play a few hours here and there and i have almost 70 000.

"Gaming should be about fun, and sometimes, not always, but sometimes Achievements distract from that badly"

That is very true. Thankfully the achievement lists has gotten better and better.

Achievements can be great if they are used to extend the life of a game. The ones that are there purely because they have to be are pointless though. Fight Night Round 3 being a perfect example. Nothing hard about that.

It's the ones where you have to beat the game on different difficulties, or perform specific actions that rock. Like forcing the player to beat Dead Space using "One Gun."

@ Negotiator: If that's your best attempt at a witty retort than I can only assume you haven't received your Fight Night demo because GOD HATES YOU.

I thought it was pretty good.

Yay, maybe I too should join this race for wasting my time only to achieve an arbitrary sum of numbers that says nothing about my skills in a game. And the reward? Why, an ever-growing number of course!

@muscleblade.

A few hours here and there to get 70,000?

There's not a hope in hell that you've "casually" played a minimum of 70 games.

I don't really care about achievements/trophy's but at the same time I look at my mates trophy list and think they have more than me so I must do something about it. That then goes against me having no time to collect trophy's as I don't have much time so I just play through games and move onto the next. But inventive tasks like the gnome quest would be fun.

I completed Fear and got under 100 I think, for beating the fookin game!
I wish that the split between off line and on line was 90/10 in all cases. I don't play over Live much due to my main gaming time being 04:00-06:00, at this time (uk) you mostly get Yanks on line and that really isn't for me!

Im a Playstation3 fan but I love the achievment system on the X360 so im gonna buy only exclusive games for the PS3 from now on....the rest is gonna be all on the X360.

The worst achievement IMO is Guitar Hero 2's "fail a song on easy" one. I doubt many people got it without deliberately playing to lose.

It also has one for sitting through about 20 minutes of credits too. I got that one whilst playing King's Bounty on my PC.

Meet John Woo anyone ?

No "Irony"? Fail.

Getting excited about Achievements is like getting excited about Tesco Points that don't buy you anything or give you a discount.

Wat's the f'ing point in that?

I understand that it can be used to highlight things in the game that may not have been noticed but surely the game should be compelling enough and have a rewards system in built for trying certain things... having a public version of it simply puts pressure on those who care about the system to do the things without any other compelling reson other than to "Get Gamerscore"

Rather than award the gamer with something like a new wepon etc. we end up with a 'Badge' that's f'ck all use to anyone.

Sorry... Achievements / Trophies are not for me and I wonder what impact they have on the direction of game design....

Shall we craft a proper reward system for trying things out such as Mario / Metroid etc. or shall we just throw in some Achievements?

Lets just hope that the answer is always "Yes" .... que Avatar !

Nevermind eh?

/rant over

But Tesco points are actually worth money, you can buy food with the coupons they send you.

I like them, I'm guilty of playing a few games just for the cheevos, mainly Skate and Skate 2 but I love them games to death.

"shall we craft a proper reward system for trying things out such as Mario / Metroid etc. or shall we just throw in some Achievements?"

oh dear.... Nintendo fan-boy upset over no achievements eh? ;-)

just kidding

I wont mention no names cos he cries when i make out that he is a cheating little whore, but i think achievements are great expesialy when you earn them youreself, what gets me is when some little dip shit downloads someone elses hard work and tries to pass them off as his/hers own work. Then achievements become pointless. At least on the PS3 trophies cant be glitched.

@Remy: Civilization Revolution achievements being in-jokes for RTS fans? What? [...] But its achievements are all historical or movie references or simply 'appropriate' titles & really quite widely 'got' I'd say

^this.

One of them's from The Simpsons, of all things.

Achievements given just for marking progress through a game are pointless. "Congratulations, you aren't bored enough of this game to stop playing yet!" Meh. So let's forget Agatha's Song as an interesting achievement, yes?

Doing cool-and-wacky things are much better. Like the HL2 crossbow and the Crackdown ones.

But I want some achievements based on freaky bad luck happening to you. Like in L4D, I want an achievement for being boomered, smokered and pounced in the space of a few seconds. You know, so if someone sees that you have the achievement, they think "Oh shit! The poor sod!"

RE: FFXI achievement - if you're playing a couple of hours every night as many MMOers do, you're looking at a couple of months to get there once you've gone round once as long as you can get a party. And to be fair, FFXI is one MMO where you can usually get a party going at any level, the main restriction is having a donkey job no-one wants in a party (hello PUPs everywhere!). Plus there are people who've been playing for 7 years on PS2 and PC who've migrated to 360, they can get the achievements straight away as long as they've got the required levels.

One achievement I'm gutted never to have got despite completing every other song on Expert on GH and Rock Band is Kick The Bucket. Might have to have another crack at that, but I have to say I'm not as sharp as I was, GH4 doesn't push you anything like as hard as GH3.

I really don't have the time to finish most of my games these days, nevermind chase achievements.

When I retire in 2045, then I'll focus on them... if I was still 15, then they'd be irresistable.

I like achievements, but not really bothered about them.

Sure it's nice when one pops up and I always get a little proud if it's a good one, I beat my chest to a few like some of the L4D ones or 100 wins on SF4 :)

Honestly though I don't play to get a 1000 (just look at my profile) and just don't see the point, I much rather just play the game (or not if it's crap!). Of course though, to some, achievements are part of the games now. Some poor lonely souls buy crap or even cheat to get them..

/ buys Avatar for a easy 1000....

Oh, are any other multi console owners completely uninterested in Sony's offering? For some reason I just could not care less that trophies were added.

"Dead Rising's 'Zombie Genocider', awarded for killing 54,594 zombies was drolly-trumped by Left 4 Dead, which offered 'Zombie Genocidist' for killing 53,595".....yes, I can see exactly how L4D trumped Dead Rising. The developers must be very upset by being drolly-trumped by a game requiring 999 less kills to get an achievement. Very upset indeed.

the amount of red rings seen while racking up these points must have hurt

A game that challenges me to do something while playing through, I don't mind.
Multiplayer achievements are by far the stupidest ones.



secretly looks forward to the 1750 points upgrade

god, not another achievements article

FUCK ACHIEVEMENTS

they have stifled real development, like all the other mandatory crap that soaks up dev time and money.

... you do realise the games are made first, right?

budgets and milestones are fixed dude.