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Achievements Have Ruined How I Play Games

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HardOCP News

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While most people treat achievements as extra incentive, a challenge or simply a reason to play a game through for a second time, this guy is letting it ruin how he plays games. :confused:

This is how I play video games now. While I sit here typing this sentence, my gamerscore sits at 122,595G. By the time you read this, it will be higher. I am an achievement hunter, or in less-polite company, an achievement whore. And it’s ruining video games.
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pretty sure a lot of people finish a game and immediately start grinding out those achievements, but you don't have to so i don't see the problem. they add nothing to my joy playing a game and instead often contain major spoilers so i don't even look at them as long as i have at least finished the game once. most are stupid anyway. you get them at points in the game that you have to pass anyway or it's just a certain kill count of specific enemies or using certain weapons. also: the article is typical for kotaku even though it's one of their less tabloid-style ones.
 
Eh, achievements are a quick and dirty way for games to add "playability" of a game, however I think they're stupid in the sense of giving you "points" as opposed to something useful for the game they've been in but they're not exactly new.

First thing that came to mind when I thought achievements was Final Fantasy 7, the "achievement" of getting the Golden Chocobo, while there was no medal that popped up anywhere in the game for it, with it you could get to an island that you normally can't and get the most destructive summon in the game Knights of the Round. Hail King Arthur Achievement Unlocked

Then I went even further back in my video game experience, Galaga! Little tractor beam fucker takes your ship, you lose a life... shoot said fucker ship comes back, now you get double firepower. Comrade Rescued Achievement Unlocked.

It's a carrot on a stick system, sometimes when you get the carrot it's tasty and nutritious, more often than not today it's simply empty but shows you another carrot to go after.
 
I've seen some achievements that were well done and actually added to the gameplay. Escape from the Pit had some decent ones. Otherwise, I have never once actively tried to get all achievements in any game I've played in the last ~5 years.
 
I tell you what ruins games.

Taking a great Franchise like Warhammer 40K or Star Wars, or name your favorite. Then let marketing morons push cookie cutter mechanisms on the actual developers so that they must focus on fitting in all of these mechanics and just loose all sight of the end result when it comes to the game play experience.

One basic concept
Two payment models
Three factions gaming
Four tiers of fun

Five character classes
Six types of vendor
Seven DLC
Eight Micro Transactions ....

Nine blah blah
ten who gives a damn
and the rest can suck my sack. .........................

Nine
 
The problem with achievements is what kind of activity they reward. When you look at a person's gamerscore you see a number, and as a person beats more games, the number goes up. Some people will equate a bigger gamerscore to better skills, or to a larger number of gaming experiences. But a large number of achievements make people do things that they would never do on their own, because doing said things is not fun. Back when I had a 360 and owned Dead Rising I spent several hours mowing down zombies inside of a car so I could get an achievement that gave 20 points and a Mega-Man buster cannon. The buster cannon, the thousands of kills, and the 20 points gave me nothing in the form of a rewarding experience, but I still did it anyway. While I obviously didn't have to do it, the problem is that these achievements reward obsessive and meaningless behavior for the sake of bragging rights.

And IDK where this post is going after that...
 
He's letting his OCD get the better of him. I play rift and I'm an achievement whore, but they don't ruin the game for me. Instead they set up challenges for me to continue as incentive. I'm taking it for what it is. I'm not letting it dictate my game play.
 
I wish Microsoft and Steam and Sony and all the game services that offer achievements would also give the option to turn them off for the people who don't want them, or use them in an unhealthy way. For example I could earn the achievements as I play but I would never get notifications, there wouldn't be any tracking for them, and no one would get to see them while they're turned off. Then people who don't want to earn them can enjoy games without looking less accomplished than other players who do earn achievements.

BTW sorry for the multiple posts.
 
I have to admit I play games now with certain achievements in the back of my mind and don't always play them like I would otherwise.
 
Operative word (how) "I" (play games).

I don't care about gamerscores at all, and have fun picking up a game to waste 5-30 minutes.
 
I couldn't give two shits less about achievements. They are totally meaningless , filler for game publishers to force gamers into another cycle of play simply to be dragged into more possible DLC sales.

Achievements are Pavlov's dog in its purest form. Retail buyer experimentation.

Play games because they engage you and entertain you. Don't play them for conditioned and totally fleeting moments of joy that amount to control.
 
I've never once given in-game achievements a first thought, let alone a second passing one.

I'll never understand why there was ever one fuck given about that kind of bullshit.
 
I don't know what a gamer score is or how something that sounds so stupid would work.

I do enjoy games though, have since I was a kid.

Now I enjoy games with my kids, nothing is ruining gaming. Unless, of course, you count the people who spend all their time bellyaching about how great gaming used to be and how bad it is now.
 
if achievement paid me i would go for it, otherwise i see no reason to have them in virtual world.
 
I had to scroogle :)D) "gamerscore". Apparently this is a thing for the console noobs.
 
The only achievements I've gotten in game are the ones that are achieved by playing through the game/story. That's why I still haven't unlocked quite a few things in BF3- I can't be bothered destroying 5 tanks with the repair tool.
 
Achievements are most often something that are added to games by lazy developers in place of actual content.
 
I've yet to go out of my way to get any achievement in any game I've ever played.
 
I've always maintained that achievements are for retards. You should set your own goals and independently determine when they've been achieved; if you need some outside entity to do this for you (and set the bar so low that no one feels "left out") you are a moron. Newsflash: games designed to appeal to morons aren't fun.

Diablo 3 is one of the most egregious examples of achievement idiocy and intellectual masturbation I've ever seen. At level one, my incredibly powerful barbarian literally shook the screen with most hits, hitting with such force that my enemies exploded. I killed a ridiculously easily group of monsters within 1 minute of starting, and got a stupid achievement. Got my next one literally minutes later. Yay?
 
Only games I've fully done achievement for are ones I really enjoy. Achievement doesn't do much for me. I might go for one or two but that's because it's basically along the way.

What achievements should do, and someone mentioned it earlier, is be tied to unlocks. Almost kind of like Mass Effect 1.
 
Achievements are really nothing more than a modernized "high score" system. I don't see a problem here.
 
i dont mind achievements per se, the thing i cant stand is when they force them into games like hitman absolution and score you based on unlocking achievements. Let me play the game how I want to, dammit!
 
My friend is like that on the ps3 he'll finish a game but won't move on to another one unless he plats it.. I told him many wtf is wrong go get some OCD meds and you'll be alright be he don't listen. lol poor bastard i can't wait to show him this.
 
All of my achievements are accidental.

Most of the time when I get credited, I think to myself, 'there's an achievement for that?'
 
I've read about people who go after games with easy achievements just to raise their score. That's some really sad shit, imo.
 
I kinda understand where this guy is coming from. While I always play my games to have fun. Once I see an achievement pop up I sometimes start to look and see what the requirements are for the others. I'll never look back at them later, and they really serve no purpose (on Steam anyways). But they start to suck me in, making me want another after another. But I've never let the achievements take away from actually playing the game and having fun... this guy just has some issues! :)
 
I have a ton of xbox360 games, but my achievement score sucks.

I never try for them. Does that mean I'm a Damaged PC Gamer?:rolleyes:

Wait Steam has them too! Grrrr....My 250+ Steam games trying to copy xbox!
 
Achievements have actually ruined games. Think about how much time developers waste to add idiotic achievements in a game, where they could be adding actual content?

1. 99.99% of achievements are pointless and don't require skill. They just require your time.
2. Achievements are a game developers way of trying to add replay value in their games, without effort.
3. As time goes by, new players to achievements will feel too intimidated by people with high scores, and just ignore the system all together.

The system should really be thrown out the window. Trust me World of Warcraft is no better for having the system either.
 
That's pretty dumb - ever since games like GTA have included "completion %" in games we've all felt compelled at one point or another to get 100% but at a certain point you stop caring and move on to the next game.
 
I generally don't care about getting achievements. I'd much rather move to a new game than keep playing the same one over and over for what amounts to e-cred.
 
God, I really have to remember to start looking at article URLs before giving Kotaku more pagehits.

Or, um, what I mean to say is, look forward to my upcoming article "How HardOCP Has Ruined The Things I Read" in which I deflect all responsibility away from myself. That always works.
 
Achievements were great when the 360 was first launched. I used to grind them out too.
Then as time went on I just played through the game without focusing on them.

Being a lazy dev is not including them at all on a platform that supports it.
 
TheCapulet said:
I've never once given in-game achievements a first thought, let alone a second passing one.

I'll never understand why there was ever one fuck given about that kind of bullshit.
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Yep, and that is all that really needs to be said. Achievements are for the low IQs.
 
I once played duck hunt for hours when I was young in the early 90's. I think there was something wrong with my version of the game as it never glitched after round 99. I got into the mid 200's after a marathon play session on Game C. To bad I never thought anything of it at the time to take a picture or video of it at the end for proof. I was like 6 or 7 at the time.
 
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