Acheivement / Trophy Rules

[powercall]

As we all know something relatively new to gaming, achievements, has shaped how we play, and replay our games. Achievements like, "Mile High club", "Star 69", and to a lesser extent "Superstar" show us how a good achievement is done through skill and patience without grinding or just using achievements to attract newcomers to their multiplayer. To these good examples there are of-course horrendous examples of games that gave gamerscore away like Fable 2, made us do nothing but grind (Gears of War 1 and 2, Prototype), and made us play the multiplayer for hours asking random players for help(need I say it , "Perfection" or the reach rank genral from Halo Wars). So I have come to you fellow gamers with a plee for help... make a list of commandments for acheivments.
I'll go first(well obviously since this is my Topic):
1)They can be for everyone. If it involves multiplayer do not make it so people with low rank cant get it even when they do it. My example is Gears of War 2 in where you can clear Horde but you must be level 100 in a multiplayer where it takes too long to level up.
2)If you must grind: a)keep it short and b)keep it relevant. My example is Prototype, it violates both of these rules with 53000+ plus infected kills. To do this you must spend 15+ long arduous hours destroying hives the remedy for this situation is to just kill 53000+ characters. Left 4 dead is excused from this rule since it's relevant in how Zombies are the only enemies you have.
3)If you're THAT desperate for multiplayer, make it short challenging and completed and low ranking and can be done offline. Uncharted 2 excels in this area since there are only 2 on their list and their both low ranking but falters since its all online. I also want to add Dragonball Raging Bone-I mean Blast for their titles achievement but at second glance at the titles so Ill go online sometime(just look me up I'm RomanBlacksheep on both platforms).
4)Yes that means DLC too. Gears 2 and Halo 3 deserves special mention in this regard for their DLC achievements most of which are challenging enough offline too. You still get you're money with us buying your DLC so you could do us a favor by letting us do it offline.
5)This my last one for today: when your company closes down their multiplayer servers, send a patch giving players the achievements for meeting conditions, such as obtaining all the offline 'achevables','bleep bloops', and all the other 'rvb' references for trophies/achievments, or better yet doing the same thing but offline, since some people may rightfully complain.
Anyway those are five to get you started I'll come back to choose the best ones.

 

[Bonkekook]

I wrote this in a blog....kind of. It is a blog, but I only wrote four entries.

So, what exactly makes achievements good? As many of you know, I'm a semi-achievement stalker(kids may read this blog, gotta keep it clean). I'm not above playing games just for the achievements. But I also have no problems with putting hours and hours into a game I love. So, with my expertise, I have come up with a reasonable explanation and guide for what, I believe, the best achievement layouts are.

First, consider your gameplay. Do you have different modes(Story, multiplayer, side-games)? How about a new experimental mode(such as Firefight in ODST)? You need to make sure you are spreading your achievements out evenly among the different modes.

I realize that taking advantage of the achievements to get people to play the different modes is tempting, but don't waste large amounts of points for trivial things. While achievements may seem to be a waste in some cases, using them correctly can lead to people having more fun with the game and even to better sales!

Second, what type of game do you have? Different kinds of games need different sets of achievements. A horror game should not have "Nut Shot" achievements. Sandbox games should not just have achievements limited to completing the story. An open-world game need fun and entertaining achievements, whereas a mostly linear game should stick closely to the story.

Third, you need to correctly spread out your achievements between single-player and multi-player. Unless a game is geared entirely toward multiplayer, your achievements should award a gamer who buys the game themself. No more than 250 points(out of 1000) should be awarded for multiplayer in a regular game.

Now, one of the more disappointing games for achievements, IMO, was Oblivion. One of the best open-world games on the 360, had one of the most disappointing achievement lists, in retrospect. Now, I put over 1000 hours into Oblivion before I became a true Achievement stalker. There are so many different things that could have been done achievement-wise that were not done. Now, I grant them a pardon, only because it was a very early title for the 360, and the achievements were still and "experimental" part of the games. Developers weren't quite sure how to handle them yet. Unfortunately, Bethesda's next open-world game, Fallout 3, didn't improve much on them. Over 600 of the achievement points from the original release were story-related. And, I believe over 1100 of the final 1550 points were obtained just by completing the story and other missions. That bothers me. Because if you look at the other achievements, there are few that are actually "fun" achievements. Reach level "xx" with "xxxx" karma. Find the bobbleheads.

Psychotic Prankster

Placed a grenade or mine while pickpocketing

The most entertaining achievement in the game, right there. I don't mind the other achievements they put in. And I don't even mind the story ones, to an extent. If Microsoft doesn't cap the amount of achievements you can put in(they cap the points, but I don't believe they cap the amount of achievements), use that to your advantage. Say, go the Half-Life Orange Box route, with 99 achievements worth 10 points apiece or so. Make them entertaining(Find the Crashed Alien Ship; doing this rewards you with a weapon as well). Say, put one in to "Find the Special Shotgun(Terrible Shotgun), for 5 or 10 points, and do that for every special weapon. Use them as a way for you to subtly get players to do more, and yet still enjoy the game by rewarding them with special items.

For one quest, solving it with the bad karma option gives you a ghoul mask that you can wear to avoid being attacked by ghouls. You should get an achievement for wearing that into a ghoul-infested area.

Call it "But I'm One of You!!!" 10

Bam.

I'm not someone who particularly hates the collection achievements, in MOST cases. I don't mind the bobbleheads, because they reward you with skill points and allow you to explore different areas of the map, which is key in a game like this. Collecting the Steel Rivets in The Pitt wasn't so bad either, because you were rewarded different items. Collection achievements are okay, as long as they reward you for it. In most of the bobblehead cases, they take you to places on the map you'd probably never go to.

That's it for now.

 

[Zacharine]

The Anti-achiever: Complete the game without doing any side-quests or earning any non-plot related trophies. Reward: This trophy and every single other non-plot trophy in the game and all related e-peen points.

 

[whycantibelinus]

You forgot to put Mass Effect 2 in there as an example of bad achievements and Mass Effect 1 as an example of good achievements.

Damn I was disappointed at the achievements in Mass Effect 2, I got all but 3 of them on the first playthrough, whereas in Mass Effect 1 I have about 10 left to get and it's taken me 4 playthroughs to even get that many.