Achievement/Trophy Issue

[Xprimentyl]

First off, I appreciate all those who might say achievements and trophies are meaningless, they don't care about them, they play the games for fun, etc.; I know, I know; thank you, but that's a tangential issue. I too enjoy games for the fun of them, but I appreciate the meta-game that is achievement and trophy hunting. I'm not a whore about it; I won't grind through a game I wouldn't normally play just for gamerscore and I can rest easy not getting the full compliment of available achievements or trophies.

But what brings me here today is an issue brought to light during my second playthrough of Deus Ex: why doesn't every game offer some in-menu tally or achievement progress tracker? This isnt just informational either; many games sport achievements that are ambiguously worded so you're never quite sure what they're asking of you. In Deus Ex, I'm driving myself nuts because I don't know if I've set off any alarms or not; I'm not even sure what constitutes an 'alarm' per the game's logic. Sure, I can prowl through forums and ask other gamers, but what an unnecessary step when the game already knows and just isn't telling? I think Gears of War 2 did it correctly and thought games wouod naturally follow suit, but its still hit or miss, mostly defering to the miss side!

 

[keideki]

I could see cases where it would be useful. But if you are looking for a way to tell how to get the achievements, why not look at the game's wiki?

 

[Dalek Caan]

No idea myself. Games like Half Life, Portal, L4D and Gears of War do it and it is very helpful. Much better to check the pause menu to see if I can earn some achievements in my current location.

 

[OrpheumZero]

It would be usefuly if both achievements and trophies tracked things if you were on the way to completion (like the Antlion eggs in the Orange Box). Heck, even an option, (which could be enabled/disabled at the player's choice) that tells you certain things on what to do to get a certain achievement.

Personally, I see no problem with the things, I can still enjoy plenty of old games without the things, though it is cool when some at least have things like the skill points in Ratchet and Clank, that go into unlocking bonus goodies, which is really what trophies/achievements should a play a role towards.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Not necessarily telling you HOW to get an achievement, just telling you how you're tracking. Back to the Deus Ex example, the achievement says to complete the game without setting off any alarms. Fine. But enemies have an "alarmed" and "hostile" status, security cameras have a "suspicious" status, and there are actual, physical alarms that can be triggered. During my first playthrough, I know I didnt trigger any physical alarms, yet I didn't get the achievement, so I don't know what else the game considers an "alarm." Had there been a stats/tracker in the game, something showing #of alarms triggered, people killed, people KO'd, I could have checked after each of my questionable encounters and seen if I'd set any off.

A lot of games do this, task you with a few over-arching goals, but don't let you see how you're doing or if indeed, you dailed somewhere along the way. It's just frustrating.

 

[Smooth Operator]

The HR team didn't even have time to do boss fights themselves, you really can't expect extra features there.

 

[tharglet]

Yeah, some games are good for this, and some games are bad. AC:B had some utterly terrible achievements that were very badly worded, so you couldn't work out what it meant without looking it up (or lots of trial and error).

"Mystery" achievements have their place - but yer, stuff like "number of alarms set off" are much better off being transparent if you're in the running for it or not.

Some games the achievements are sort of annoying cos they end up being spoilers for the game. ME2's they obviously were aware of this issue and cleverly worded some so they wouldn't spoil the plot.

So yeah... I'm all for transparent trophies, as long as it's for ones like "x number of kills" and "avoid doing x" sort of thing... but if it's gonna spoil the plot I don't want to see it until I achieve it (or until the 2nd playthrough if it's something I've just missed).

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

First off, I appreciate all those who might say achievements and trophies are meaningless, they don't care about them, they play the games for fun, etc.; I know, I know; thank you, but that's a tangential issue. I too enjoy games for the fun of them, but I appreciate the meta-game that is achievement and trophy hunting. I'm not a whore about it; I won't grind through a game I wouldn't normally play just for gamerscore and I can rest easy not getting the full compliment of available achievements or trophies.

But what brings me here today is an issue brought to light during my second playthrough of Deus Ex: why doesn't every game offer some in-menu tally or achievement progress tracker? This isnt just informational either; many games sport achievements that are ambiguously worded so you're never quite sure what they're asking of you. In Deus Ex, I'm driving myself nuts because I don't know if I've set off any alarms or not; I'm not even sure what constitutes an 'alarm' per the game's logic. Sure, I can prowl through forums and ask other gamers, but what an unnecessary step when the game already knows and just isn't telling? I think Gears of War 2 did it correctly and thought games wouod naturally follow suit, but its still hit or miss, mostly defering to the miss side!

Ah, the good old 'Foxiest of the Hounds' run-through. Yeah, I linked that one with my 'Pacifist' run, figuring if I wasn't going to be spotted I wouldn't need to kill anyone. And I totally agree with you. I spent pretty much the entire game worried that I'd tripped an alarm somewhere and hadn't noticed. It was such a relief to finally finish the game and see that bad-boy pop up during the credits.

Spoiler: If you want, here's what constitutes alarms

The term 'without setting off alarms' means only the alarms as in the sense of burglar/intruder alarms. You know the exp bonuses? 'Ghost' is for not being seen and 'Smooth Operator' is for not letting any guards trigger alarms? Well the game works the 'FotH' achievement by checking to see if you got the Smooth Operator bonus on every mission where that bonus is possible. You can let guards see you, but you have to take them down before they can trip those wall panels. Reload if you hear klaxons. Also note some alarms in the game are auto-triggered, the game takes this into account but will punish you for a second trip in that area. Good luck.

 

[Maximum_Power_Cheese_Supreme]

I could see cases where it would be useful. But if you are looking for a way to tell how to get the achievements, why not look at the game's wiki?

I know, there's not really any other point to make these hidden achievements other than making sure you don't spoil anything for the player who reads the achievements list to see what they might as well attempt.

Steam achievements (like how it keeps a tally of how many grubs you've squashed or how many kills you've got as Sniper) should also tell you when an achievement is active or in-active.

Say for example the Little Rocket Man achievement. When you pick up the Garden Gnome it pops up with "Achievement active: Little Rocket Man" with the icon pale gray (like a button you can't click.)

Then if you drop it off a cliff without noticing or some bug occurs, at the next auto-save or when you save it, if it is not in your immediate vicinity it will come up with another pop-up "Achievement in-active: Little Rocket Man" with the icon in greyish-black tones. Even if you left it a gravity guns 'right mouse button hold' away from you across the other side of the check point line, an "Achievement active: Little Rocket Man" will pop back up again.

You can check it in the Achievements window, and you can load an earlier save if you had a random bug where you have the little fella but it says you don't. It might even use a progress bar sort of thing. But the mechanic behind how the achievement actually unlocks is that when the game recognises the prop of the gnome has been placed in the brush (block) inside the rocket chamber and the hatch has closed. You'd probably need to modify some of the game to make this addition.

 

[Maximum_Power_Cheese_Supreme]

First off, I appreciate all those who might say achievements and trophies are meaningless, they don't care about them, they play the games for fun, etc.; I know, I know; thank you, but that's a tangential issue. I too enjoy games for the fun of them, but I appreciate the meta-game that is achievement and trophy hunting. I'm not a whore about it; I won't grind through a game I wouldn't normally play just for gamerscore and I can rest easy not getting the full compliment of available achievements or trophies.

But what brings me here today is an issue brought to light during my second playthrough of Deus Ex: why doesn't every game offer some in-menu tally or achievement progress tracker? This isn't just informational either; many games sport achievements that are ambiguously worded so you're never quite sure what they're asking of you. In Deus Ex, I'm driving myself nuts because I don't know if I've set off any alarms or not; I'm not even sure what constitutes an 'alarm' per the game's logic. Sure, I can prowl through forums and ask other gamers, but what an unnecessary step when the game already knows and just isn't telling? I think Gears of War 2 did it correctly and thought games would naturally follow suit, but its still hit or miss, mostly deferring to the miss side!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution, let's face it, it is all the "Pacifist" and "Foxiest of the Hounds" achievements that are to blame for countless escapist threads complaining about your boss fights. All your players didn't bring along any heavy weapons because they filled their inventory with stealth weapons; and spent all their praxis points on hacking (fortify lol that is what saving is for) and nothing on dermal armor.

People whom had they not known about the existence of such an achievement would've played it through properly. Going into each level stealth and slowly building up lethality that rose to that glorious frag and heavy weapon orgasm boss battle (just cause it isn't steal doesn't mean you don't need to use cover idiots!)

I believe the way the game handles whether the achievement is still active for this particular sav. file is the same way Xprimentyl mentioned regarding the "Foxiest of the Hounds" achievement (Post number 5).

Copy pasted from http://www.msxbox-world.com/xbox360/guides/215/deus-ex-human-revolution/index.html

You'll net a Ghost/Smooth Operator bonus at the end of some objectives which serve as a good indication you've not been discovered. If you receive the merciful Soul bonus after neutralizing an enemy, this means you didn't kill him. You can also see the "ZZzzz" when examining a body.

NOTE: You can still get Foxiest and Pacifist even after numerous "Hostile" states. General rules of thumb to follow are:

No other enemies must be alerted other than the one that made you turn "Hostile"
No red cameras
No enemy pushed the alarm (Those hackable buttons on some walls with a hand on it)
No need to worry about alarms in Panchaea at all!
UNSURE: Turret alerts, just avoid those alerts to be sure.
UNSURE: The Fall, I did not test this.
UNSURE: Kills in the prologue, I did get shot at here too. Just sneak past these to be sure.

TIP: You can usually avoid a lot of enemies. And SAVE with multiple save slots often.

Personal Addition: Careful dragging unconscious bodies. I once dragged one across an auto-save line and the body had decided to die for some reason. I also had a police kill a gangster. I went through the entire game trying so hard not to kill anyone that I probably ended up screwing up my game without realising. If you don't wanna bother try again, I sure don't, just get someone else's savegame and load that (if you play it on Steam like me.)