5punk

This is something ive been meaning to post about for a while, and the discussion about GFWL has prompted me to actually do it.

I like achievements. At their worst they are irrelevant, but at their best I have had many games that I have ended up playing for longer and enjoying more because of the challenge of getting achievements. Arcadey things like tower defence games get the most out of them for me: I would play them just the once, never coming back to them once I had completed every level if it wasn't for the promise of an achievement if I complete the same map slightly faster, or using slightly less resources. Games like Arkham City, CoH and soon GW2 give achievements for basically just finding ways to get to places. You could make your own challenges of getting to difficult places without the achievements, but with them it turns into a game. I am all for optional things that insert more play time into a game I enjoy.

I've noticed something weird about them though: Not all achievement systems work on me in the same way. I found the achievements (Badges) in CoH very compelling, and I know a lot of you lot did too. Same for WoW. Similarly, I find the achievements for the xbox (and most games that originated or have been developed on the xbox carry this across to the PC in some way, even when they don't use GFWL) very...well, I don't really know the word for it, but I notice them, enjoy getting them and have at least some level of interest in trying to get them all. However, with the exception of Teef, I give not a single shit about steam achievements. I cant figure out why. The only common thing I can see with CoH and xbox achievements that steam doesn't have is a total score, but I don't get the achievements for bragging rights. Its just a personal accomplishment thing. I honestly couldn't tell you even roughly what my xbox gamer score is.

Other than the score, there doesn't seem to be any similarity between the things I like that differentiates them from the ones I don't care about. There tends to be less xbox achievements per game than steam achievements, but CoH and WoW both had bajillions of the swines, so its not that. They all do a reasonable job of informing you when you get them, and telling you which ones you haven't got yet. I don't get it.

What do you lot think about achievements, and do any of you experience the same sort of "some are great, some can fuck off" feeling with them?

I agree. It's great fun to complete tricky challenges in a game, and having an achievement for it gives you official affirmation that you've completed that challenge. The fact that they're optional and pretty pointless in most cases sort of adds to the appeal - if they were a requirement then everyone would do them. In CoH and WoW you got little bonuses too, like titles or mounts. It turns into bragging rights too then, and while a lot of us might not think that's important we play multiplayer games for the shared experience, and achievements are a good way of convincing you that other people will realise you've done something challenging (even when we all secretly know that nobody else cares).

I find I don't care about Steam achievements either, though. I've a few theories on this. First is that they are entirely removed from the game. There's a little popup telling you that Steam knows you did something, but it isn't acknowledgement from the game itself. Maybe it's like winning an Olympic event and the crowd and other competitors not caring, but some guy from the government sends you a text saying well done. On top of that, Steam doesn't communicate achievements well at all. You get a selection of them on the game screen, but the full list comes from the community page, and that is hugely unwieldy. So in most cases you don't work towards achievements because you don't know what they are, you just get one pop up every now and then. Lastly, they're usually pretty inane. CoH and WoW had some brilliant tasks for achievements, very difficult and imaginative, and while some of the Steam achievements might be difficult they're more along the lines of 'complete this level in 5 minutes' or 'get a perfect score'.

I loved WoW's achievements, but have ignored them in every other game. I would complete WoW's to an OCD level, and genuinely found them fun and addictive.

I think this is because achievements in WoW were part of the game, as well as just being something fun you could ignore. Most of them directly translate into how good at the game you are and how much of it you've seen. In my days of hardcoring it up, getting that number as high as possible was a necessity to me having a complete a character as possible. In single player games I would never bother because there's no bragging rights. If there are extra challenges to be done then I'll just do them for the challenge, no achievement needed. Challenges as achievements tend to be pretty quirky anyway, using odd gameplay methods rather than being hard in a well thought out manner. Another thing is said OCD, it's all or nothing. I can't devote time to doing achievements in every game I play, and I don't want to purposely start if I can't get to a point I'd call "finished" (in WoW I accepted I could never get them all, so got all that I knew I could).

Most likely I'll go full whore for GW2's, but they don't look nearly as interesting as WoW's.

There can still be bragging rights to single player achievements. I occasionally brag about the Little Rocket Man achievement. It took ages, was bastard hard, and was utterly ridiculous. If I ever wrote a gaming CV that would be on it.

I like achievements, but not much more than seeing them pop up and thinking: "Oh, cool". I very rarely make any extra effort to get them, it's just a nice addition.

Joose wrote: I found the achievements (Badges) in CoH very compelling, and I know a lot of you lot did too.

No idea what you mean.. CoH was the first game where I really bothered to chase badgers/achievements and I sometimes feel a little silly whilst doing it. I like to pretend I don't care, but getting a shiny pinned on my chest still gives a childish thrill that I can't see me getting bored of any time soon.

I'm non plussed about achievements when they're gaming achievements, sometimes they make me play the game better or for longer as well other times perhaps introduce me to new methods or places, that I'm cool with. Things like Just Cause 2's achievement for standing on the highest part of the island etc...
Other times I just ignore them if they're unobtrusive.

What I completely loathe about them is when they're tied into progression or advancement and fucking obtrusive, or woven into the game in such a way that they're not actually achievements.
Quite a few games recently have started giving out achievements simply for things that happen during normal play, like completing Chapter 1 of a SP game or killing 50 enemies. That just makes me think they're bullshit as it feels the achievements in that game have been designed to act like a virtual Skinner Box rather than as a reward for either player skill or something similar.

Basically, I'm either ambivalent about them or just out and out hating them.

I think Steam achievements have yet to mature in the way XBox ones finally have. The early Xbox sports titles gave you 1000GP for as few as six arbitrary goals, but these days they are inventive and prolong play. We've only really seen that with Steam games from Valve, like Portal and Episode 2.

I think too many game makers are too eager to get that tag that says "comes with Steam achievements" and just buy the service without much input, resulting in too many games where the achievements are pretty much a linear list of the stages you've played through.

In contrast, most XBox titles now show the makers really care about them and put thought into creating devious and fun ones, hinting that they do increase sales or prolong gameplay, as it clearly takes resources to put in the code from the start to track and log game actions.

As a result, I tend to view Xbox ones as a more valuable currency than Steam ones, but I am kind of proud of both of them and love comparing with friends. Also Xbox ones are seen as less corruptible - as you don't tend to get "achievement servers" running custom maps or hacks. I got pretty much all the original TF2 ones one afternoon on a map specially made with lines of dispensers to sap and dummies to bash, yet I still recieved the halo hat after they cracked down on it.

I only really pay attention to achievements when I can get something out of them, like WoW or GW. Steam achievements? take em or leave em.