There was a time, long long ago, when you usually had nothing to explicitly show that awesome 100% completion of your most beloved game ever, other than going over all the modes showing your friend how they were fully unlocked/maxscored/whatever.
Achivements were a good service and a good idea, allowing for quickly showing the world that you had mastered that game. At some point tho, designers thought that people was happy to "achieve" things, so they decided that giving out more achievements, people would be happier with their games. Just like a moronic DM or modder that thinks that since players like gold, giving them tons of gold will make it a good campaign/mod.
Currently, achievements have lost all sense of having achieved anything. While games Dark Souls makes you suffer, and then tells you "very well, now let's see if you can with this", most others seem to continually pat on our heads just in case we aren't feeling like we are getting somewhere. And I hate it. I hate it even more than EA's DLCs. So, for your rejoyce, here's a collection of my guidelines in determining which achievements shoudl a game have:
1. No multiplayer achievements. Yes, I know your game is sooo awesome, but it doesn't matter, it will eventually die. Even if people still play it, it won't have the critical mass necessary to sustain a multiplayer community. Then people will be either unable to get those achievements, forever, or feel forced by you to cheat the game getting them together with a friend.
2. Do not give more than one achivement for the same action. I don't need two rewards (one for beating the game, another for beating the last boss, which coincidentally ends the game) thank you, that's for kids in need of approval.
3. The only exception to this is in case you're giving achivements for beating the game aat different difficulties, in which case harder difficulties should always[b/b] give the ones for lower difficulties.
4. Rule 2 includes giving away achievements for partial completions. I just need ONE achievement to show that I've completed the game. Two, if you have a major plot twist at the middle of the game. Example: Reception party at Portal. Not one achievement every damn boss.
5. No achievements for "deeds" that could be completed if I left my 3 years old brother in front of your game, such as "kill your first enemy". I want achievements when I actually achieve something, and I would rather not think about what do you think about me if you're rewarding me as if I were that same 3 years old baby.
6. On the other hand, no achievements that require no skill, only boring grinding, as in "kill X enemies with Y weapon". Wow you've killed 5000 bad guys with the BFG, even if you only needed 500. You're such a master of this game.
7. You may include one achievement for completing the game, and up to one for each long/chain of/difficult sidequest not necessary for completing the game.
8. You may include one for getting max score or a really high score in a given activity.
9. You may include achievements for discovering easter eggs, or specific special actions, unless the gameplay makes a must the use of one of said actions (Half-Life 2 I'm looking at you).
10. You may collect one achievement for "collect all the X crap items". Additional "collect Y items" achievements will require said items to be of some real use, such as health containers.
11. You may include achievements that require replaying the game one or more times, but they are bad and you should feel bad.
12. All in all, you should end somewhere between 5 and 20 achievements.
Let's see an example: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time
- Obtain the master sword
- Beat the game
- Get max punctuation at the horse archery range
- Get max punctuation at the slingshot range
- Get max punctuation at the bow range
- Catch the special fish at the fishing pound
- Collect all the skulltulas
- Collect all the hearth containers
- Collect all the poes
- Obtain the Biggoron sword
- Obtain all the songs (if I recall correctly, there was one not necessary to finish the game).
- Obtain all the bottles
- Obtain the three godesses powers
AND THAT'S IT!
Do you agree that this has gone too far, and if so, do you agree with the exposed guidelines? If not, why?
Bonus:
13. You may not include spoilers on the achievements descriptions or titles.
14. Don't you ever dare creating achievements for negative things, such as "get killed 20 times", "score the least points in whatever". That's retarded and the best example of achievements lose of meaning.
Achivements were a good service and a good idea, allowing for quickly showing the world that you had mastered that game. At some point tho, designers thought that people was happy to "achieve" things, so they decided that giving out more achievements, people would be happier with their games. Just like a moronic DM or modder that thinks that since players like gold, giving them tons of gold will make it a good campaign/mod.
Currently, achievements have lost all sense of having achieved anything. While games Dark Souls makes you suffer, and then tells you "very well, now let's see if you can with this", most others seem to continually pat on our heads just in case we aren't feeling like we are getting somewhere. And I hate it. I hate it even more than EA's DLCs. So, for your rejoyce, here's a collection of my guidelines in determining which achievements shoudl a game have:
1. No multiplayer achievements. Yes, I know your game is sooo awesome, but it doesn't matter, it will eventually die. Even if people still play it, it won't have the critical mass necessary to sustain a multiplayer community. Then people will be either unable to get those achievements, forever, or feel forced by you to cheat the game getting them together with a friend.
2. Do not give more than one achivement for the same action. I don't need two rewards (one for beating the game, another for beating the last boss, which coincidentally ends the game) thank you, that's for kids in need of approval.
3. The only exception to this is in case you're giving achivements for beating the game aat different difficulties, in which case harder difficulties should always[b/b] give the ones for lower difficulties.
4. Rule 2 includes giving away achievements for partial completions. I just need ONE achievement to show that I've completed the game. Two, if you have a major plot twist at the middle of the game. Example: Reception party at Portal. Not one achievement every damn boss.
5. No achievements for "deeds" that could be completed if I left my 3 years old brother in front of your game, such as "kill your first enemy". I want achievements when I actually achieve something, and I would rather not think about what do you think about me if you're rewarding me as if I were that same 3 years old baby.
6. On the other hand, no achievements that require no skill, only boring grinding, as in "kill X enemies with Y weapon". Wow you've killed 5000 bad guys with the BFG, even if you only needed 500. You're such a master of this game.
7. You may include one achievement for completing the game, and up to one for each long/chain of/difficult sidequest not necessary for completing the game.
8. You may include one for getting max score or a really high score in a given activity.
9. You may include achievements for discovering easter eggs, or specific special actions, unless the gameplay makes a must the use of one of said actions (Half-Life 2 I'm looking at you).
10. You may collect one achievement for "collect all the X crap items". Additional "collect Y items" achievements will require said items to be of some real use, such as health containers.
11. You may include achievements that require replaying the game one or more times, but they are bad and you should feel bad.
12. All in all, you should end somewhere between 5 and 20 achievements.
Let's see an example: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time
- Obtain the master sword
- Beat the game
- Get max punctuation at the horse archery range
- Get max punctuation at the slingshot range
- Get max punctuation at the bow range
- Catch the special fish at the fishing pound
- Collect all the skulltulas
- Collect all the hearth containers
- Collect all the poes
- Obtain the Biggoron sword
- Obtain all the songs (if I recall correctly, there was one not necessary to finish the game).
- Obtain all the bottles
- Obtain the three godesses powers
AND THAT'S IT!
Do you agree that this has gone too far, and if so, do you agree with the exposed guidelines? If not, why?
Bonus:
13. You may not include spoilers on the achievements descriptions or titles.
14. Don't you ever dare creating achievements for negative things, such as "get killed 20 times", "score the least points in whatever". That's retarded and the best example of achievements lose of meaning.
