I definitely feel like I've got a lot more time out of games than I would have otherwise. Giving me things to do that I wouldn't have done or even thought of without them.
When done right, achievements are a fun challenge to milk a little more juice from a game, as it can be fun to have an excuse to continue to play a game that maybe you've already beaten. It can encourage you to play with different characters or visit different places... they're nice when done well.
They're also a good way to track your own progress while playing a game, which is nice for completionists. Though when the DLC comes out, they're probably weeping or excited to jump back into a game they had fun in too.
Ive done this 3 times. You wanna know the best one?
Hunting templars. It actually takes about two minutes or so to register you've killed them. And there is a pretty well known glitch that can happen if you die between killing them and it counting it. So itll say you still need to kill that templar....but hey guess what? He does not respawn. Have fun replaying the entire game.
They’re also, when done well, a good way to help a player gauge progress toward interacting with all of the non Easter egg content a game has to offer, which is why getting all achievers has come to have the title of “100% the game.”
If they’re done correctly, getting ever achievement should signal that you didn’t miss anything
Edit: I just realized another person said the same thing. My bad
I mean, "trophies and achievements" have been in games since as long as I can remember they were just listed in game instead of on a profile.
No reason to get every dragon/egg/gem in Spyro, you can beat it without doing that. No point in getting every target in Mercenaries, you can buy everything and use everything without that. You can beat Crash Team Racing without any of the bonus race stuff and drive every track. There's a lot of pointless stuff in games people have gone out of their way to get over the years.
For sure. That’s why I qualified all of that with “when they’re well done.”
Sending me on a glorified scavenger hunt in a game about…not scavenger hunts…isn’t good achieves design imho. There may be some exception that don’t feel like a chore, but they’re pretty rare
Key phrase here is “when done right.” I enjoy completely the trophy lists for games, but I’ve done it on fewer than half the games in my library because sometimes the devs make it suck. I only go for them if it adds enjoyment to the game.
I agree with this but I also want to add that some people (like me) have a large back log of games and once I finish all trophies I know its time to move along to another one and if I really liked it then ill come back to it!
Those games are so good, and having a built-in reason to replay those games was a huge perk. I may be conflating this with the second game, but trying to do a no-kill run or maybe a 'never seen' stealth run was so much value, as it was a fun challenge to try and accomplish.
Subnautica and Below Zero both only feature one optional achievement each which makes getting all of the achievements feel more rewarding and less like a time sponge
I fully agree. This is also why I'm not a fan of hidden acievements. If people are hunting achievements they're gonna look them up anyway, what's the bother for.
Yeah, they give you something for playing the game. If some people care they can hunt for them all. I mostly just play the game and unlock the ones that pop up during gameplay. Sometimes, if a game interests me, I'll go ahead and get most of them. On Playstation, the only game I ever fully completed was Ghost of Tsushima before the DLC.
I don't like how you phrased it with: "milk a little more juice", as it might suggest that the devs try to manipulate the players to spend more time in the game (which can be true in some cases). But otherwise I agree.
I like when the achievements arw reflected in-game . Couldn't care less about console/steam trophies or whatnot, but games that have like... a room that shows little collectibles you unlock for achievements? Yeah, I'll spend time grabbing those.
Yep. I enjoy achievements that encourage or guide me to something a bit different. If I discover them naturally, it feels like a little nod from the devs of “yep, we thought about that too, good find”. If I learn about them just by looking at the achievements, I get to go try out something new/interesting.
The developers choose the trophies so completing them guides me through their vision of the game. I usually end up interacting with the material in a way I never would have on my own.
I feel like if I need an arbitrary pointless task to make me play the game, I'm not really enjoying the game any more and I'm just forcing myself to play.
I do but side quests give me story. Yes I also do things just to see it's possible but that's something that I personally think is interesting. I don't do "kill 200 enemies in less than 5 minutes." Type achievements because I don't care about them.
For example I hated the shooting range challenges in resident evil games and I mostly ignored them. I'd probably get 4,5 more hours from the game if I do them but those are not fun hours for me. I play resident evil for the story and the atmosphere, not so I can sit in a shooting range and do challenges.
If you start needing an excuse to play the game, are you really enjoying it? I am not ripping on achievement hunting, even though it has never been my thing, personally.
Guild Wars 2 is an MMO that does achievements properly, since they give in-game rewards. I just don't understand grinding achievements just so that they can sit in your account. It's not even something that you can show off, since other people will in most cases not care at all.
idk why they took away the PlayStation stars thing that gave you little trophys u could show on your account. ik its lame but it was also kinda cool lol.
> If you start needing an excuse to play the game, are you really enjoying it?
Seems an odd comment coming from someone claiming to do things just for 'an excuse' of shiny things. Like, if you're just doing something to 'show off', are you really enjoying it?
> I just don't understand grinding achievements just so that they can sit in your account.
I literally explained how it could encourage unexplored play styles or areas... did you not read my comment at all, or just truly could not comprehend it?
LOL, what? Because I asked you a couple questions? You seem to be projecting quite a bit here based off some terrible assumptions on your part, or is that just your uninspired retort to anytime you are asked a question you don't have an actual reasonable answer for?
I pretty specifically started by entire post with "when done right" and ended it with "when done well", which would exclude 'menial task' goals that are simply time sinks.
When done well, and not simply are grinds/farming related, they absolutely can be a fun goal to try and accomplish.
Almost no game from the 90s and early 00s have grind. Unless you count regular gameplay as acumulation of resources and RPG elements as grind. Grind started mostly with WoW - kill 100 rats to get 5 ears, mine 100 ore deposits to make one armor etc.
Yes but a lot of the times achievements are done very wrong. Kill 25000 enemies, when a normal playthrough has 2000, or collect 500 collectables (which of course we all waste our time looking up guides). Online only achievements that are impossible.
They also add a certain amount of stress to a game, I’ve switched to PC and even though they have achievements I have no interest in starting over, it’s helped me to actually just enjoy the game, I still will search for collectables if they give me an unlockable like in the spiderman games, I did all extras and enjoyed it because I knew I’d get something for it, I just can’t see myself giving hours of my life away for “you killed 10000 bad guys- 15g”
I specifically started by saying "when done right" and ended with "when done well", which should clearly cover the notion that sometimes achievements are not done right or done well... we get it... they're not all winners.
Well you realize they’re all done bad when they replaced unlockables, most games used to jampack in unlockables and now it’s a rarity for sure. That and most games have achievements that are just there to pad out game time, not adding anything but a pop up.
It just takes away fun, adds stress and gives you nothing but a meaningless number. I’ve even stopped playing a game that I liked because I missed a missable achievement, opting to start over and not finish it after. If you like it you like it, it just isn’t great for games.
Well the problem is that achievement never cover 100% of a game, plus like the post said you get nothing from it.
Only: wow year you did max 50% of a game and have a platinum trophy or 1000 Gamescore.
Most people stop playing a games when they reach the 100% achievement/trophy.
I really loved when achievements encouraged you to play the game in a way you might not otherwise, but still made sense. The first Modern Warfare had an achievement for not alerting any enemies during a stealth mission. I beat the mission and alerted a few people the first time I played, but that achievement made the mission so replayable for me
I love this too. FEAR had one to beat the game without using bullet time and one of the Half Lifes had one achievement to beat the game using only one bullet I think.
I always love those kinds of challenges. Hitman had some wild ones too where you could only use certain disguises or tools and it got intense real quick.
Factorio has a few of those that wound up being the reason for me doing several of my runs. The two that really changed up the game for me were Lazy Bastard and Clean Hands.
Lazy Bastard strictly limits how many items you can craft by hand- basically, it's almost exactly enough to research and build your first automated crafter. So from that point forward, EVERYTHING is made by machines. Not having access to handcrafting definitely changes the flow of the esrly game, where bulk-crafting stuff by hand as you run around is normally the primary way to build up your supplies.
Clean Hands was the real challenge. It requires you to wait until you unlock artillery- pretty late in the tech tree- to destroy your first enemy base, and to do it using that artillery. That means you have to expand aggressively early before the bugs get set up on all the nearby resources, and you wind up investing way more heavily in defense since you can't just get rid of bases that are threatening you.
Fun runs! But definitely a lot harder than doing it the normal way.
For me its the other way around, if achievements are their, it feels like a task.
And most of the time you don't even finished the game to 100% if you have all achievements, just the basic everyone can get and that doesn't even cover, atleast in modern games, 50-70% of a Game.
True, which is why I don't use them at all.
What would be interesting for achievement, is that they want you to do challenges, for Example: Elden Ring: Beat the Game with Level 1 (Weapons and gear are not affected). And if you did you get a nice in-game reward, something that has use.
Or chain-achievements, would be interesting too.
I'm with you. Those feather collection achievements are just to make you grind. Unless they're in the possible routes you can take, and collect most of them that way, then it's fine.
For example, Death Stranding has 56 memory chips spread around the entire map, but they're in places that make sense.
I found one when I went into a cave to hide from the rain, another when climbing to the top of a mountain... those are the ones I enjoy.
True. I really like achievements that try to make something fun out of a feature already in the game, but don't like it when they add random objectives just for the sake of achievement hunting
Well said! I love collecting achievements/trophy hunting. I'm a big completionist with my games and it gives me something to do as well as unlocks the full story!
Yeah. I agree with the OP in most scenarios personally but I loved P5R so much and the trophies weren't too wild so it's the only game I've gotten a Platinum on
I’ve rarely encountered games I’ve loved to the point of replaying right away. Prototype 2 was that game and achievements gave me excuses to replay the game with a goal in mind. It’s probably one of the only games I got every single achievement for.
Whatever even better is getting an extremely difficult achievement without even trying. Playing GTA I stole a helicopter and was lying around for ten minutes--fot an achievement for having 5 stars for that long.
Yup. I miss the super smash broadcast melee days of playing to unlock characters. Instead of most fighting games nowadays where its you paying to unlock characters
Among many others, FTL has a lot of good ones. For example, trying to get to a certain zone with no shots fired. Trying to get down to 1 up and then still win the run.
Of course, World of Warcraft has some of the best. It has been years since I played, but maybe a third to a half of the dungeon bosses have a cool achievement that forces you to win the fight with some alternate strategy.
Agreed. I will say though that I think grinding things in games shouldn’t be tied to achievements. Stuff like the milestones in Spider-Man (ex; perform 1000 air tricks, defeat 10000 bad guys, etc.). When it becomes grindy for the sake of “adding extra content,” that’s where I’m not on board
Same. It's a double-edged sword for me though when there are time consuming achievements that are RNG-based (looking at you RDR gambling achievements 😒)
I enjoyed half life 2 enough to go back and get the achievement where you take the little gnome from the start of the game to the rocket at the end and send him to space. I haven’t really bothered with achievements apart from that unless they occur as part of the game.
That was my first platinum trophy on PlayStation ever, I've finished Persona 5 and really wanted to play it again, checked trophies and noticed that they require really low effort except one that requires from you to play game for the second time, tried it and had such a good feeling of accomplishment that I've started doing trophies in mt all other favourite games, likes Kingdom hearts, Dark Souls and Yakuza games. I kinda like that I had to master some activities that I didn't want to engage before and I learn to love Mahjong and Koi Koi in Yakuza and played it a lot in my free time.
I've set some rules for myself when doing all trophies, i never focus on 100% the game on my first playthrough, just chill, and I always try to 100% on a save file with a highest difficulty, I don't want to cheese the trophies. It made replaying games really fun for me.
I don’t chase achievements at all, but I am always confused when I get an achievement for just.. doing a bit of the game I would’ve done anyway. Like in a story driven game, I just do whatever, get to the next bit and it’s like “achievement!” - that’s just playing the game lol
I feel like people aren't getting that achievements are basically just the new version of collecting all 120 stars in Mario64, or finding all the secret tapes in Tony Hawk Pro Skater. It extends the game for folks who want that.
Yeah true, but also games can just be good and compel you to play them through actually fun gameplay rather than gimmicks and challenges that just pad the run time. I’ll be replaying Skyrim at least once a year every year for the rest of my life and I assure you it ain’t for achievement hunting lmfao
I used to feel the same as OP. Now yeah I’m more like you. Like I’m not going out of my way to 100% a game but it give me reasons to play a game I like more or adds a fun challenge. Also like seeing my number get higher than my friends because I’m playing so many different games I probably would have never tried before
As someone who likes to sit down and platinum a game if I really enjoyed it, the “beat the game on hard mode” trophies can fuck right off if hard mode is locked behind beating the game on normal first.
I was basically done with the game, unlocked almost every part and weapon but I just didn't feel like I was done with the game.
I looked at the trophies and figured I'd go for it.
So glad I did because the game was amazing and I wanted to squeeze even the tiniest bit of time extra out of it before putting it down.
Yeah idk my wife is all about 100% completion and getting all the achievements but on the other hand I tend to not even look at achievements (as in Xbox achievments) and just like to play a story and explore the world as it comes naturally. Aside from the usual FPS games we mainly play open world RPGs and those types of games (fallout, Skyrim, Red Dead 2, Cyberpunk 2077, ect ect) I really enjoy just exploring the open world without the explicit goal of finding something/someone and when I come across something cool outside of the main story line then its even cooler because I had no idea it was there. BUT with that being said, if I put hours and hours into a game; IE finish the main story line, do a ton of side quests, explore until im bored, THEN i usually put it down and don't come back for a long while. I always hit a point where I'm satisfied with what ive done and seen and im just ready to move on. This is in stark contrast to my wife who will literally not rest until every detail of the game is completely discovered and every possible interaction has been completed
Absolutely this. I played the shit out of Tears of the Kingdom. Did I get all the outfits? No. The bublegems? Not even close. How many wells? No thanks.
Did I play that game until I was tired of playing that game and feel I got my money's worth? Yes. Now I'm playing a different game.
Fr. I’d have never done full vampire build on Skyrim if it wasn’t for the achievement and it was super rewarding, vampire builds on Skyrim’s are crazy op.
For every game Ive avoided because of trophy/achievements (RDR2 for example) there are multiple that I would've never played had it not been for great avhievment lists. (Guardians of the Galaxy, Stray, Inside, Somalia, A Plague Tale, Shadow of the Colossus, Last Guardian, etc)
Agree as well. For example, in the original Guild Wars they had an accomplishment where you had to go to every location in the game. It wasn't frustrating to begin with, but in the end it became frustrating. It forced me to actually discover locations that I didn't realize I hadn't been to and in the end I found it satisfying.
I 100% wouldn’t have kept trying to beat Gna in GOW Ragnarok or the legendary ships in Black Flag Resynced if not for the lure of the platinums. I’ve never celebrated that much ever for a game than when I got those two trophies
You wouldn't have thought of them because no one would willing try to get 500 headshots with the crappiest pistol in the game of their own volition. And all you're getting out of it is the dopamine of a notification tone and a pop up.
For me it's the opposite. I stopped caring about those sweet 1000G a couple years ago and play many many more and different games. I find it much more relaxed. Except Forza Horizon Series. Imma 100% them every time.
That's the additional pointless feedback loop doing what it's supposed to. Glad I've never fallen victim to such 'achievements' keeping me playing a game I otherwise would have moved on from.
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u/MammothAsk391 Aug 08 '26
I definitely feel like I've got a lot more time out of games than I would have otherwise. Giving me things to do that I wouldn't have done or even thought of without them.