Poll: Achievements and Trophies. Do you even care?

[j0frenzy]

I like them when they are done well. Achievements can encourage a new play through of a game I already beat and would have put down. Additionally, well set up achievements can encourage me to play a game a different way, e.g. Bioshock had one for getting all the tonics, which limited the amount of plasmids I could use because I needed to spend all of my Adam on tonics. My first time through I was playing heavily with plasmids, so the shift in focus gave me a new way to play a game I already loved playing through.
But achievements can have problems too. I hate multiplayer achievements for games with a strong single player focus (see also, I'm never 100% Bioshock 2). I hate achievements that look for difficulty but don't count downward, so beating the game on hard mode only gets me the hard mode achievement but not the one for normal and easy mode. And I hate starting up a game and hating it and having the total lack of achievements in that game tied to my gamer card for eternity. I know I hated X, but it looks like I failed at gaming. Also, I hate that DLC achievements get added automatically whether or not you have the DLc. You have all 1000 points that X game has to offer, but because you never bought the DLC, it is not actually completed.
And while I'm already talking about achievements, can we please stop playing up ME1's achievement layout. It required a minimum of 3 playthroughs to 100% , all requiring in depth play of the game not just speeding through the plot and invalidated playing 3 of the classes. The reward system was a nice idea, but that system was flawed to hell.

 

[FinalFreak16]

i won't repeat what i said, because i already clicked enter and didn't copy/paste. i wrote a fair bit in the comments section about how certain types of achievements are good/bad. hope it helps.

in short, i like the majority because it can provide you with an incentive to get the most out of your game by playing it in different ways.

I'm reading all comments posted via the questionaire as well as here so thank you for the feedback. So far i've recieved a lot of interesting opinions and ideas, including many things I hadnt considered which was beyond my expectations. I should be able to structure a great report around everything I've collected so far.

Hopefully i'll soon be working in the industry and it will be great to share these results with other developers!

 

[TehCookie]

I don't care for the achievement system. I'll check them over to see if they have any interesting ways to play the game I haven't tried but other than that I pretty much ignore them. When I first got my PS3 I was going to try to get a lot of trophies but when I looked at the list it seemed more like a chore than fun. While I would like it if it was just that the one game I loved enough I wanted to 100% forbid me from earning any trophies because I took it over to my friends house and played it. Not to mention how everyone treats it as an e-peen. People shouldn't take it so seriously, I'd rather be able to mod/hack games and have no value towards the gamerscore than make it secure and have it limit what you can do with your games.

 

[SageRuffin]

I probably shouldn't... but I can't help but wanna collect as many of the little fuckers as I can. :/

They need to be more creative though. Giving me credit for shit I'm supposed to do anyway doesn't hold a lot of weight (like those "Press Start" cheevos... what the fuck).

 

[FinalFreak16]

I probably shouldn't... but I can't help but wanna collect as many of the little fuckers as I can. :/

They need to be more creative though. Giving me credit for shit I'm supposed to do anyway doesn't hold a lot of weight (like those "Press Start" cheevos... what the fuck).

Part of my initial research was in why we enjoy collecting things, in this case the achievements. It varies from person to person and involves a few different theories such as self determination, positive reinforcement, social conditioning and even as an evolutionary response. These are the psycological reasons though and ultimately it boils down to whether or not you feel a sense of fun/enjoyment from doing it.

It seems people dont generally enjoy recieving awards for easy tasks, or tasks which they were going to do anyway without the incentive of the reward so it can be argued that achievements like these may be doing more harm then good!