Poll: Should Steam implement a "GamerScore" system for achievements?

[TheHomelessHero]

So not too long ago I abandoned console gaming for the PC prior to the Xbone and PS4 launch and I have to admit, I was kind of an achievement whore back when I primarily played on the 360. I loved the feeling of account-wide progression that continued with every game I completed. Now that I more or less abandoned consoles because of all the enticing PC exclusives, I feel that there is now a void when I complete a game. Dark Souls 2 is a more recent example, where I have little desire to complete the more difficult achievements (Grinding for those damn Miracles and Pyromancies), because I feel it won't give me anything to show off on my account. I know it's a relatively minor problem for many, I know that alot of people don't give two shits about achievements or 100%ing their games, but I'm interested in how you escapists feel if steam were to implement an account-wide progression system like gamerscore or trophy level tied to achievements.

 

[duwenbasden]

Fine, if I can turn that shit off. Blizzard did something like that and it is an epic waste of time.

 

[Bravo Company]

The closest thing steam has to this is the achievement showcase thing you can put on your profile once you hit level 10. It shows your average achievement percentage for you games, mine also shows the rarest achievements I have unlocked. I'd enjoy a gamerscore type system.

 

[TheHomelessHero]

The closest thing steam has to this is the achievement showcase thing you can put on your profile once you hit level 10. It shows your average achievement percentage for you games, mine also shows the rarest achievements I have unlocked. I'd enjoy a gamerscore type system.

Reached level 10 a while back, never bothered with the whole showcase thing, didn't know about that, thanks for the heads up!

 

[nesbitto]

I'm in a similar position. Left a 360 for my new PC. I'd love to see a "gamerscore" style record for accounts and to have it contribute to your steam level. The problem is that there are programs out there that can alter your steam achievements, so you can have a 100% record without having to play the game even. Valve would have to implement some sort of anti-cheat system to stop this, and I can't see them bothering to do so.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

So not too long ago I abandoned console gaming for the PC prior to the Xbone and PS4 launch and I have to admit, I was kind of an achievement whore back when I primarily played on the 360. I loved the feeling of account-wide progression that continued with every game I completed. Now that I more or less abandoned consoles because of all the enticing PC exclusives, I feel that there is now a void when I complete a game. Dark Souls 2 is a more recent example, where I have little desire to complete the more difficult achievements (Grinding for those damn Miracles and Pyromancies), because I feel it won't give me anything to show off on my account. I know it's a relatively minor problem for many, I know that alot of people don't give two shits about achievements or 100%ing their games, but I'm interested in how you escapists feel if steam were to implement an account-wide progression system like gamerscore or trophy level tied to achievements.

technically if you are level 10 or above on steam, you can show off different kinds of shit on your profile, like screenshots, reviews, items in your inventory and achivements, if you are level 10, you can edit your profile to have either an achivement showcase or a rare achivement showcase

with the first one you can showcase up to 7 different achivements on your profile, the latter shows only the rares achivements you have, tough that one is kind of worthless, because the rarest achivements arent always the hardest

you can either buy cheap cards or craft yours to get badges and level up

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

F**k gamerscore, achievements and trophies. In my opinion, the existence of these has done massive harm to games that would have been significantly more enjoyable without them. By giving people these little targets ("gamifying" games themselves, a meta-game) it alters the way people approach and play games. You no longer play how you want (or would have in the absence of them), you perform certain actions specifically for them, actions the developer dictates.

These meta-game things can keep one thinking about having to do this action, play that playstyle, find that collectable instead of just having fun and being immersed in a game. Considering that most people will only play a game once, I don't doubt there are many who will look up guides and whatnot to ensure they get the most of these achievements is that playthrough. It takes away from the enjoyment of the game by making us focus on these minor tasks...in many cases requiring grinding for hours to achieve or performing actions, making choices or playing classes we otherwise would not have. How many times has the existence of an achievement in a game influenced or guided your actions, in honesty? Have you intentionally gone out of your way, played a certain way or made a particular in-game choice for one?

A good example of this is in DX:HR (a game I otherwise greatly enjoy). There are "achievements" for completing the game without setting off an alarm, for not killing anyone, for finding every XP codex. This means players are shoehorned into the "developers recommended" playstyle, all the weapons and weapon mods may as well not exist. What happens if an alarm is accidentally set off? That's right, the player reloads, all because of the achievement. In ME1, there are achievements for spending sufficient time with each of the crew members, which means to get them all, we have to play with characters we might not want to, may not suit our playstyle or benefit our Shepard tactically. (I remember rolling an adept, playing as far as the first Mako mission then doing the "glitch" by casting singularity on the Mako to get the achievement. This was years ago when I mistakenly gave a damn and in fairness, I game about which I did (and the singularity, in fairness, was the most uber bonus power to unlock for vanguard)).

Yahtzee on this very site summed up the pointlessness of achievements in his WoW: Cataclysm video [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2634-World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm]. (Skip to 3m14s for the relevant part).

Keep gamerscore away from the PC, kthx. IMO there is nothing more liberating and immersive than playing a game without the plague of scores and achievements.

 

[DementedSheep]

I go for achievements but don't give a shit about gamer score. I'm not against it but don't care either way.

 

[Fireaxe]

While 95% of achievements are for doing stupid things that never come up in general gameplay, no.

 

[TheHomelessHero]

F**k gamerscore, achievements and trophies. In my opinion, the existence of these has done massive harm to games that would have been significantly more enjoyable without them. By giving people these little targets ("gamifying" games themselves, a meta-game) it alters the way people approach and play games. You no longer play how you want (or would have in the absence of them), you perform certain actions specifically for them, actions the developer dictates.

These meta-game things can keep one thinking about having to do this action, play that playstyle, find that collectable instead of just having fun and being immersed in a game. Considering that most people will only play a game once, I don't doubt there are many who will look up guides and whatnot to ensure they get the most of these achievements is that playthrough. It takes away from the enjoyment of the game by making us focus on these minor tasks...in many cases requiring grinding for hours to achieve or performing actions, making choices or playing classes we otherwise would not have. How many times has the existence of an achievement in a game influenced or guided your actions, in honesty? Have you intentionally gone out of your way, played a certain way or made a particular in-game choice for one?

A good example of this is in DX:HR (a game I otherwise greatly enjoy). There are "achievements" for completing the game without setting off an alarm, for not killing anyone, for finding every XP codex. This means players are shoehorned into the "developers recommended" playstyle, all the weapons and weapon mods may as well not exist. What happens if an alarm is accidentally set off? That's right, the player reloads, all because of the achievement. In ME1, there are achievements for spending sufficient time with each of the crew members, which means to get them all, we have to play with characters we might not want to, may not suit our playstyle or benefit our Shepard tactically. (I remember rolling an adept, playing as far as the first Mako mission then doing the "glitch" by casting singularity on the Mako to get the achievement. This was years ago when I mistakenly gave a damn and in fairness, I game about which I did (and the singularity, in fairness, was the most uber bonus power to unlock for vanguard)).

Yahtzee on this very site summed up the pointlessness of achievements in his WoW: Cataclysm video [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2634-World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm]. (Skip to 3m14s for the relevant part).

Keep gamerscore away from the PC, kthx. IMO there is nothing more liberating and immersive than playing a game without the plague of scores and achievements.

I don't exactly agree that achievements ruin immersion. If players are focused on a game purely for the achievements, they are choosing to harm their experience. I usually go for achievements on subsequent playthroughs, for the longest time I hadn't had the money to purchase that many games, so for me at least, they added replay value and helped me find little things the developers put in the game that I would have otherwise not found. It's mostly there for replay value in the end. Also, it is totally possible to disable achievement pop-ups on both consoles and PC, it's there for the people who want it, just because you don't approve of achievements, doesn't mean they should be removed for the people who like pursuing them. It's an optional objective with no real tangible reward that is there for the people who want it, and can be ignored for the people who don't. I personally enjoyed my second playthrough of Deus Ex: HR, not activating alarms and doing it kill-less added a whole new challenge that I otherwise would have probably not bothered with. The player is only "shoehorned" into a specific playstyle or character class if they are willing to ruin their experiences first time through by doing nothing but going for the achievements, it's no different than those who went through zelda games using a guide (which many of my friends did before achievements were a thing). You can view them in two different ways, achievements either harm your first runthrough, or make your second run through of a game better because you are put into completely different situations still within the same game world. Some games even use achievements to add to the game like in Starcraft 2, where the campaign achievements usually have the player playing even more carefully with his/her units and production than he would otherwise, and pursuing difficult optional objectives that add to the difficulty of a frankly, easy campaign.

 

[Zhukov]

Where's the "Couldn't give half a dry turd one way or the other" option?

I wouldn't be opposed to it, so long as it was easy to ignore.

 

[Vivi22]

Gamerscore is one of the least interesting things ever implemented in the history of gaming, and there's actually evidence to support the idea that external rewards like achievements actually make games less fun for most people. I'd rather see consoles remove these systems than see Valve implement them.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Coming from a massive achievement whore: No. The achievement showcase is just fine as-is. The only thing that I think might be interesting is a badge for achievements that gives you experience based on the number of achievements owned (on diminishing returns like the "Games Owned" badge), and maybe a second one that gives exp based on the number of Perfect Games (again on diminishing returns). Outside of those couple of ideas, the current showcase is fine as-is. People who like hunting achievements can have it front-and-center on their profile, people who don't can choose to showcase something else.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

The closest thing steam has to this is the achievement showcase thing you can put on your profile once you hit level 10. It shows your average achievement percentage for you games, mine also shows the rarest achievements I have unlocked.

I prefer the one that lets you pick the achievements to showcase, but admittedly part of the reason for that is because I have a lot of achievements in games that added cheevos post-launch, so they're easy to get but still considered "rare" since so few people have come back to get them. So for me, a "Rarest Achievements" showcase would be a bunch of lackluster achievements from the same game. I'd rather show-off my picks from games I've 100%'d. :3

 

[Rednog]

No, please god no. Unless you can actually use points to buy things like cards or whatnot, it's just another layer of annoyance. Achievements, in my opinion, should only exist to entice players to play their game in a new way/ to perfection. Instead of cheesing an area maybe there's an achievement to play it a super risky way; or that super hard boss fight where you just let your allies die maybe this time around you try to save them all. Stuff like that not, oh grants you beat the tutorial, oh you got past level 1, good job jimmy you killed 2 enemies!

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Meh, if you want an artificial number displayed on your account, I don't see why not. Not something I'd ever care about, but as long as it doesn't interfere with the game, go ahead.

 

[Bravo Company]

The closest thing steam has to this is the achievement showcase thing you can put on your profile once you hit level 10. It shows your average achievement percentage for you games, mine also shows the rarest achievements I have unlocked.

I prefer the one that lets you pick the achievements to showcase, but admittedly part of the reason for that is because I have a lot of achievements in games that added cheevos post-launch, so they're easy to get but still considered "rare" since so few people have come back to get them. So for me, a "Rarest Achievements" showcase would be a bunch of lackluster achievements from the same game. I'd rather show-off my picks from games I've 100%'d. :3

Yeah, my achievement showcase is currently filled with the achievements from the new killing floor update. I'm too lazy to pick out the achievements I like most, so I just let it pick some for me. The thingy that lets you pick your achievements also shows your average percentage too, so its just preference.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

My answer is in-between no and HELL NO.

Steam already has achievements for the the achievement whores/hunters, so a total score (especially when there are various ways of showing them off) is rather superfluous combined with the ability to add mods to multiple games which give you all the achievements.

Having the score add to the current Steam Level system would be even worse, high level Steam accounts gain a small but measurable increased chance of getting trading card booster packs, meaning combined with the above hacks would mean problems for the marketplace unless Valve either:

1) Nerf drops to the point of uselessness ala Diablo 3.
2) Close those holes, potentially killing any sort of mod scene for those games.

So no, no gamerscore and definitely no way to increase a Steam Level. Just trade cards like everyone else if you want a bigger E-peen.