The Best Achievements

Like them or not, achievements have become a staple of modern gaming, giving players goals to strive for and a measuring stick with which they can compare themselves to random strangers on the internet. Eurogamer discusses why they've become so popular, and takes a look at some of the most entertaining examples. Quoting: "... we mock Achievement points because they spell out in large numbers what is so pathetic about video games. But we also celebrate them, because, when used in funny, creative or interesting ways, they also spell out what is so compelling and wonderful about video games. Because for every Achievement in which you have to do nothing more than play through a tutorial there's another that subverts convention, rewarding you for skipping it instead. For every fetch quest that has you collecting dogtags for the millionth time, there's another that makes you fight the baddy with your arms tied behind your back. And for every Achievement you earn in jest for pressing the start button, there's another that only rewards the single best player in the world."

Comments

What Can I Say?

[eldavojohn]

With a grand total of 311,673 gamerpoints, Xbox Live User Stallion83 has won more in-game achievements than any other player. Indeed, he's earned the full 1000 gamerpoints for no less than 204 of the 437 games he's played on his Xbox 360, a Herculean accomplishment of time, effort and, in a great many cases, skill. And yet, as the URL of his website, www.1milliongamerscore.com makes perfectly clear, Stallion83's quest for numerical glory is not even halfway done.

People love recognition. And you're making this published online? Finally, something you can look at at the end of a day spent gaming and feel some sort of achievement (no matter how small).

Hats off to you, Stallion83. I somehow envy and pity you at the same time.

Hell, I myself am guilty of this on the very site we are communicating on (reminds me, need to go moderate to keep that running total).

Brilliant move on Microsoft's part (can I say that here?). Certainly not original but ingenious to add an additional level of addiction.

Re:What Can I Say?

[Freaky Spook]

Brilliant move on Microsoft's part (can I say that here?). Certainly not original but ingenious to add an additional level of addiction.

Being more into the story, or the action of the game, I am usually pretty oblivious to the Achievement system, and find achievements are earned pretty randomly for any stupid little nuance the creators decided to include.

I don't replay titles just to collect achievements, like Assassins Creed where you get an achievement for collecting every flag in the game, to me that's just completley pointless.

I know some people obsess over their achievement score though, and occasionally I end up in a lobby with some kid bragging about his score, or people picking on other people because they have low achievement scores and it reminds me of why it was so good to finish high school to get away from that crap.

Re:What Can I Say?

[N3Roaster]

If you like achievements, I recommend Achievement Unlocked (the poor elephant...).

Re:What Can I Say?

[Jurily]

Certainly not original but ingenious to add an additional level of addiction.

I wonder if we need more addiction for today's games. Why not just make it, you know, fun?

Re:What Can I Say?

[MrAngryForNoReason]

I don't think that achievements are related to how addictive a game is. I see them as acknowledgement of your time spent with a game. I like them because after playing a game for a few hours there is recognition of my time spent and what I have done in that time.

This is especially true in multiplayer games, or puzzle games that you play over and over. With a single player story you can measure achievement by how far through you are. But after 100 games of Settlers of Catan, or Gears of War you aren't any further forward. Achievements very simply show what you achieved in a game.

Now I don't subscribe to the whole 'collect every last X' type achievements that require players to scour levels for every last bit of junk. But when they are used properly they reward players for playing well, and for doing things over and above in the game. A good example of this is in Left 4 Dead. A lot of the achievements are given when you take a risk and pull it off. For instance there is one for leaving the safe room to help another player, rewarding the kind of play that makes the game more exciting and enjoyable for the whole team.

Re:What Can I Say?

[Opportunist]

Thank you for mentioning L4D. Because some of the achivments are actually diametrally CONTRARY to the main theme of the game: Teamwork.

Examples? The one where you can only use pistols. How does this empower my team if I deliberately reduce my capability to fight? I become a liability for my team.

No HP-kit or healing someone when you have less than 10 HP yourself. Same. To get this achivement, you have to play "stupid". You throw away a HP kit in both cases. In the first example, you pretty much become a pill hogger, depriving your team from this resource. In the latter, you are possibly wasting your HP kit (which you should definitly use at 10 HP or less) just to get that achivement.

And so on.

I don't say all achivements in L4D are braindead. Some are very, very intelligent. Though I wish they had put more emphasis on achivements that reward teamplay. How about one where you get an achivement for a few 1000 saves? Or where you can actually lose achivements again if you consistantly play like a selfish prick?

Re:What Can I Say?

[MrAngryForNoReason]

I think the idea of achievements like the pistols only one is that everyone in the team goes for it at once. Thereby creating a new kind of mode. A bit like the WoW achievements where you have to complete a fight in a certain way that makes it more challenging.

Re:What Can I Say?

[silent_artichoke]

Congratulations, Stallion83... you ARE the biggest loser!

Speed runs, sequence breaking, etc

[Haoie]

Great fun to watch and to do. Although these usuall aren't "official achievements", as they tend to exploit the game in some way or another.

A good classic example: Super Metroid

But, of course...

[djupedal]

Because as we know, there are achieved achievements; there are things we know we achieved.

We also know there are unachievable achievements; that is to say we know there are some achievements we can not achieve. But there are also unachieved achievements -- the achievements we don't know we didn't achieve.

This is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why this is the greatest game of all time

http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement-unlocked

Re:This is why...

[julesh]

Why hate the AC? The game's mentioned in TFA... oh, right.

City of Heroes Badges

[Bonker]

City of Heroes did the whole 'Accomplishments' thing fairly early on.

Some of my favorites are

'Untouchable' - Defeat 200 mobster bosses.
'Speeder' and 'Speed Demon' - Navigate the Christmas-only ski slopes in Pocket D (twitch-haters LOATHE these since they cannot be ground.)
'Transmogrified' - Save the Terra Volta nuclear reactor core from melting down while it's being attacked by waves of enemies (Skyraiders, Freaks, or Rikti aliens). This is, incidentally, also the trial which earns players the right to respecify their powers.

Two of the hardest to achieve are 'Master at Arms' and 'Demolitionist'. They require the player to participate in 10 or more 3-6 group raids to plant bombs on the crashed Rikti Mothership and then to fight the Rikti Master at Arms, U'kon G'rai (You con grey).

Re:City of Heroes Badges

[Vintermann]

Nethack has had "achievements" for a long time. Atheist conduct (never pray), Illiterate conduct (never read scrolls or write on the ground), weaponless conduct (never hit with a wielded weapon), pacifist conduct (complete the game without killing a single enemy personally!)

I remember an old arcade game by Taito, don't remember it's name, it was a spaceship-style shooter where you would pick up stars to buy powerups. Just for fun, I once tried to see how far I could get without firing a shot. To my surprise, when I finally lost a life, I was sent a long, long way ahead in the game. One of the few "secrets" I've found all by myself.

So voluntary challenges aren't new, even if tracking them between sessions is.

2^6

[electrosoccertux]

The Slashdot Achievement "Days read in a row" is killing me. If I'm out of town for a weekend I find myself worrying if I'll have access to, and time to hop onto the internet and log in to Slashdot to keep my winning streak rolling.

Weighing the consequences, I've decided to just play it safe and live with mom in the basement. Don't have to have a job to pay rent that way.

I've hit 2^6 so far, anybody have better? (Be honest please, no scrips that check for you every day. Yes that's a good idea, wish I had done it myself before giving the idea away like this, heh heh ;)

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[MediaStreams]

Sony really got Skill Points/Trophies/Achievements right with the PS3.

The Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum breakdown lets you look at another gamer's profile and almost immediately get a sense of just what type of gamer they are.

With Trophies you get:

* Obviously what games they play

* What games they like the most and put the most time into

* What type of gamer they are - lots of just Bronze Trophies and they like to buy games and not complete them, lots of Silver and Gold Trophies and they are a serious gamer who completes games and gets lots of the side quests and hard parts of games done, Platinums and you know you've looking at a hardcore gamer

And like Skill Points, Sony has talked about your Trophy level unlocking things inside of Home in the future.

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[artor3]

No, you're the one who doesn't grasp the concept.

The idea is to have EVERY game have tons of little achievements. People find them, accidentally, and then find themselves wanting to complete the set. It keeps them playing past the point where they might have otherwise stopped.

Having more people playing your games improves your mind share, and attracts more developers. And it costs MS not one cent. They are giving away absolutely nothing, but because it's a limited amount of nothing, and you need to work to get that nothing, people eat it up.

It's been a tremendous success, to the point that other companies are now mimicking it. Sony Skill Points? Who's ever heard of those?

and we come full circle

[panthroman]

Old arcade games had points. Your goal was to get on the high score list, so everyone could see how good you were. You weren't meant to actually win games. Heck, if you get too far in Pac-Man, it crashes.

When console gaming got big, people didn't care too much about points. It wasn't as fun -- nobody was there to see it. So points went out of fashion, and the goal was instead to win. Super Mario 3 for NES had points, but who cared? It was beatable, and we wanted to win.

Now that consoles are networked, gamers can have public recognition again. And back to points we go...

Achievements are like pop music

[Tokerat]

They could be really good, but so far they've mostly been nothing but flashy and uncreative.

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[R.Morton]

Actually Sony didn't come up with it first either, Activision, Imagic, Atari were doing this sort of thing back in the 80's Albeit with "real awards" of physical item such as T-Shirts (Imagic, Atari),patchs and pins (Activision) as well as Baseball caps. (all 3 did this from time to time.)

  just google it and see for yourself.

R.Morton

Sort of

[Moraelin]

Sort of, but not everyone, or not in the same way. For example, as early as the first online games (MUDs), Bartle wrote his classic paper in which he distinguished the following kinds of players and their interactions with the game and with each other:

- achievers, who love achieving stuff. They want to have the biggest score, the most virtual money, have the full top-tier equipment set, etc

- explorers, who are mostly interested interested in reverse engineering your game. They want to discover places, or to reverse engineer how your game works, or whatever other intellectual pursuits. Many actually don't care much about material achievements or titles, except in as much as they're needed to explore. Their "achievements" are all about knowledge gained, not stuff you could hang on the wall or sum up in points.

- socializers, who are pretty much just using your game as a chat room which incidentally happens to also have a game on the side. These people are there to make friends, organize some guild party, stuff like that. And chat lots. Although you could point out that these are their own kind of achievements, they're also not the kind that's easy to automatically measure and slap a title on.

- "killers", named so because their greatest reward is driving someone off the game, effectively perma-killing them off. They're the kind who'll try to harrass, annoy, give you grief, etc. Or what the rest of the world calls "griefers" or "trolls". Their favourite prey are the ones who take unwarranted hostility personally, i.e., the socializers. Although the "killers" title can be confusing, don't confuse them with PvP-ers. A lot of PvP-ers are actually just achievers (e.g., for the honour points), and a lot of killers actually are more creative with their harrassment than camping your corpse all day.

Anyway, again, it's the kind of thing which is hard to measure in achievements. And most killers don't care much about their character (including equipment, titles, etc) as such anyway, it's just a harrassment tool. Think of all the guys who didn't even bother getting another armour than the death shroud in UO, for example. Their achievement wasn't having the best looking outfit, but the fact that they could gank you repeatedly when you went mining. A lot bought disposable accounts who will get banned, but hopefully serve their purpose as harrassment tools in the meantime. What makes anyone think that on such a disposable account any titles achieved on a character matter at all?

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[xp]

Also Slashdot's karma is the same idea. So basically it's a ripoff.
--
Slow Poke

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[R.Morton]

sorry to double post just wanted to throw a link in here related to my above post.

http://www.atariage.com/2600/archives/activision_patches.html

1998 Spyro Skill Points Earliest Example

[Anonymous Coward]

1998's Spyro on Sony's PS1 is the earliest example that anyone has come up with that:

1. A unified system with an overall progression level

2. Elements that a player normally wouldn't do in normal gameplay

3. Rewards for obtaining X number of those elements

Nintendo had games for the GameCube with something similar, but they came a few years after Spyro.

High Scores
Easter Eggs
Secret weapons and items or areas
Rewards for high scores

all existed before Spyro. But the Sony's Spyro game was the first to ever come up with what we now know as the Skill Point aka Trophy aka Acheivement system today.

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why gamers consider Microsoft's ripoff of Sony's Skill Points to be such a joke is it is a system that designed with Microsoft's bottom line in mind and not gamers.

The stupid GamerScore tells people nothing more than how much money you've wasted buying tons of shit games no one would normally want just to inflate your score. Absolutely disgusting to any real gamer. But not surprising coming from a company like Microsoft.

Ever heard someone ask someone else what their GamerScore is? Didn't think so.

Yet you hear all the time people talking about how many Platnium Trophies someone has.

Stupid, Microsoft. Stupid.

Such a basic concept that anyone who plays games could have explained to them.

 

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[fractoid]

e-penish waving.

And that's what Sean Connery thinks of online gaming.

Re:My Achievement Points

[Thundarr Trollgrim]

I guess the last two make up for the negative points of the first four at least ;)

No, no..

[msimm]

They're badges of shame. I remember cringing when I was on a serious Team Fortress 2 jag and it proudly displayed my in-game hours (eagles scream!). After they decided to add full-on achievements I'd decided to explore a bit more of this life thing I'd heard so many people talking about.

Re:No, no..

[discord5]

proudly displayed my in-game hours (eagles scream!)

The last time I got 10.0 Eagles Scream on Steam I was on leave and my vacation plans got canceled. Two weeks of spending most of my time either playing TF2 or flying a spaceship around in the X3 sequel (or is that expansion) messing about with the scripting interface (which I must say is an abominable horror).

A friend of mine looked at my profile, pointed it out to me, and at that point I realized I had just wasted two weeks on gaming. It had been since my high school days since I had wasted that much time on videogames. For some reason it didn't quite bring the same satisfaction that it used to.

Holy mixed metaphors Batman!

[Andy Smith]

they spell out in large numbers

Shurely shome mishtake?

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[Hatta]

The idea is to have EVERY game have tons of little achievements. People find them, accidentally, and then find themselves wanting to complete the set.

I don't get it. When I get a game, I want to complete it. But when completing a game involves dicking around with hundreds of pointless achievements, it's clear I'll never complete it, or at least I won't have any fun doing it. So I move on to another game.

I still haven't finished Mario 64 for this reason. I got sick of playing the same damn level over and over again looking for yet another god damned star. I made it to the end of the level without dying, why can't that be enough?

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[Xest]

To me that's the key difference between a good achievements system and a bad one.

Call of Duty 4 was imo quite good, 1000 points was achievable on the 360 if you played well, but you also didn't really have to go out of your way to get them - you just had to be quite good at the game to get the mile high club one and I liked that, getting it actually felt like an achievement.

Compare that to something like Fallout 3, where you're expected to do tedious, dull side quests that are no more exciting than your average dumbed down so the server doesn't keel over MMO quests and the main game story finishes in just a few hours and you have an example of a crap achievement system. Stuff like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 and some of the NHL games had silly achievements too where you effectively had to be the best online player in the world or thereabouts to achieve them. Most people don't have time to get themselves up to that level.

Sometimes the extra stuff on top of the main storyline works - some of the big open world games can be pretty fun with achievements like climb your way to the tallest part of the game world in Crackdown, but others, such as finding the 800 or whatever orbs it was you had to find total were just fucking stupid.

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[brkello]

Um, hate to break this to you. I have never heard anyone talk about Platinum Trophies either. I have a feeling that hardcore MS gamers talk about gamerscore and hardcore Sony gamers talk about platinum trophies. The rest of the us just play games to have fun and aren't involved in the stupid fanboy crap.

Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points

[Cheeko]

Indeed. Not to mention most people could care less about overall scores or totals, but rather compare with their friends what they've done in a specific game.

Oh you got the 10k kills in Halo? Nice I'm only 30% of the way there, etc.

Its only on the high end of things that the overall total becomes an e-peen contest.

The MS achievements are also nice because they gauge progress as well as skill in a lot of cases. You can tell if a person finished a game AND if they were good at it. Its the perfect mix as it allows a casual person to feel like they are achieving something and the hardcore gamer can bump his chest and show how he got the hardest achievement in the game done.

Re:LOL! The Xbots Always Cry Over MS's Ripoff

[Gizzmonic]

There's a My Little Pony game? Fucking awesome! I was holding off on buying an Xbox, but you changed my mind, buddy!