Are People Overly Against Achievements?

[NeutralMunchHotel]

Well, are they?

Now, to make a more thought-filled point, I've noticed that a lot of people are actually against the idea of achievements. Now I don't get this. I can see how people could not give a toss about it, in that they don't care about them and the only reason they have a gamerscore is because of the story-based ones and the occasional aciidental one. However, I've seen some achievement-based threads where the haters come out and words like 'e-peen', 'worthless' and 'distracting' are thrown about. 'Evidence!' I hear you cry: well, if you really want some examples of this right now I will trawl through some threads to find some, but I just assume that people have already seen at least a couple of these examples.

So, the question is this: are people overly against achievements. And, if you are one of these (to me) mythical creatures, can I ask what your reasoning is? Because the way I see it they're just a bonus that you can take further if you want, and they allow you to get more out of the game.

So... your move?

 

[Acidwell]

I quite like them but i would prefer if it didnt make a noise and pop up on screen it's such an immersion killer

 

[Kpt._Rob]

I can't say I've ever understood the hatred they seem to attract either. I have yet to play a game where immersion was ruined by an achievement. If it's good enough to immerse me, the achievement isn't going to distract me. And even if I didn't give a rat's ass about achievements, I'd just turn them off so I never had to bother with them. As it is though, I quite like them, they're like a record of the games that I've played, and often of things I worked really hard at in games. I think that's really cool, to be able to, at the press of a button, see what games a gamer has played, and how much effort he/she has put into them. Sure, it's not an accurate way to judge who's gamed the most or anything, but it's just a fun little feature.

 

[HardRockSamurai]

I understand why people can hate them, but personally, I love them.

In my opinion, the achievement system is the single most innovative addition to this generation of video games. By serving as an invisible incentives, achievements have given gamers a whole new way to look at video games. In fact, some game's achievements force people to play the game in a different manner altogether, something an achievement-less game could never do except to those obsessive types.

 

[AgentNein]

I actually noticed that they're quite popular with people. I really couldn't give much of a toss about them.

What I don't get is people who ***** about super hard achievements, they tend to be the types who actively seek out getting every achievement they can. I treat them more as a nice perk, like 'oh hey I got an achievement that's kinda neat'. I don't really see the point in giving achievements for simply playing through the game, feel like those developers are missing the point. I'd rather get an achievement for doing something cool.

 

[Proteus214]

There was a really great discussion on the use of achievements in modern games on Gamedev.net a while back. The point was, there have always been artificial ways that the players themselves would lengthen the play of a given game by making up their own achievements (speed runs, high scores, play with a weak weapon, etc.) and now the industry has decided to formalize this concept in the form of achievements.

My point is that there really isn't a reason to hate them, because people just do that kind of stuff anyway.

 

[oppp7]

They add what's great about MMOs to games that have gameplay aside from clicking and grinding.

 

[TheNumber1Zero]

yeah they probably are.

but you know,whatever man.it's there opinion.

 

[walls of cetepedes]

My point is that there really isn't a reason to hate them, because people just do that kind of stuff anyway.

And it awards them for being creative.

 

[Osloq]

I too am bamboozled by the hate for it. Surely if they don't matter to you then them being in the game should be irrelevant and gamerscore even more so. Personally I think it's because they claim they don't care but they see the poor fraction of how many they've attained and feel bad.

 

[Jaqen Hghar]

I too love them. I think I have played most games more than I would if there was no achievements in them. I generally play through a game, not checking for achievements, and then I'll see what I must do to get them once I have beaten it/the game starts to be boring. This way I have something to strive for, which is usually pretty fun.
So I can't really understand all the hate. Why hate something which is fun and makes a game last longer?

 

[tsolless]

especially if something particularly emotional is happening on screen.

Mention one game that has achievements that has any sort of emotional sequence that occurs.

 

[Chiefmon]

I like achievements because they...

1. Give you something to work toward in a game. I wouldn't have tried to destroy 35 cameras in Portal if I hadn't had the achievement to motivate me. I isn't a matter of "OMG I needz mah pointz!!!11!", I look at the achievements as little side challenges that I try to complete. I often times have a lot of fun trying to get achievements.

2. It can increase the re-playability of a game. In many games, there is an achievement for things like "Play through the entire game without using grenades." No one would normally do this unless there was an achievement for it. Achievements encourage you to replay the game, which is good.

3. Achievements give you an idea of other players' skills. If I'm in a multiplayer match, and some idiot comes in claiming that he is "teh best", you can just look at his achievements and see that he doesn't have "Get 25 Kills in Multiplayer" and promptly shoot his claims down. In some games, like COD 4, there aren't any multiplayer achievements, or they could have just created a new profile. But this is rare. Usually, achievements are a good indicator.

4. They can give you proof of your claims. On the original XboX, if you said that you managed to beat the final boss without taking any damage, no one would believe you. However, if you have the achievement, you have proof. Now people can't really lie about these accomplishments. Of course, if there isn't an achievement for it, you could still lie about it, but games usually have achievements for beating the game on the highest difficulty and so on.

 

[ridiculon]

I dunno. I just think that if games are ever to reach the same level of artistic depth as films and books, we need to move past shallow, meaningless rewards for purely arbitrary achievements. And besides, it is pretty distracting whenever that little text box pops up, especially if something particularly emotional is happening on screen. Can you imagine how crap it would be if books and films had little text boxes appearing everywhere.

The Matrix: Unshootable!- You just dodged a whole clip's worth of bullets.

A Clockwork Orange: Rapetastic!- You just tied up a novelist and raped his wife in front of him!

American Psycho: Cold Blooded Killer!- You've killed three associates and one hooker without being caught by the police.

Pulp Fiction: Smooth Mover!- You won the dance contest!

Wind In The Willows: Public Menace!- You just trashed your fifth automobile!

Lord Of The Rings: Fucking Righteous!- The Balrog did not pass!

Whoop de fucking doo!

If you ever want video games to be as artistic as books or movies, you're gonna have to get people to stop running around like idiots and trying to break every rule in the game, figuring out how they can hump, murder, pee on, etc. the random bystanders. But people are dumb and they want to do that, so you'll have to figure out a way to just show them something, rather than let them have control. What we call those things again? It's like a game, but it's all cutscenes? Right. Movies.

Seriously, video games are games. Games cannot reach the same level of literary perfection as a story, because you have to let the player do what they want to some extent for it to be a game, and most people are not going to want things as precisely as characters in stories.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

They were a fun novelty for a few games but mostly I find them slightly annoying. What sort of reasoning to I need? I don't want to be nagged by a "gamer rating" to play games that I find boring to increase my rating. I don't want to feel that I'm a tool for replaying games I like because I'm just doing it to unlock achievements.

 

[CNKFan]

I thought that the achievment points were the mythical Microsoft point, but they aren't so they are really really worthless. Also they replace real unlockables like god mode, unlimited ammo, or that stupid cheat that let you walk through walls.