How important are 360 "Achievements" to you?

BTP

I'm really not sure where I want to go with this thread, so please bear with me.

I think the achievements are cool, in the sense that they can give you additional goals to work for beyond doing what you usually do in playing a game. And it's cool that you can show to everyone exactly what you've accomplished. Y'know, e-penis and all that. However, because of the points value given to it, it's taken e-penis to the next step because it tracks every single little thing that you do and you're getting achievements and "points" for things you would have to do to progress through the game anyway. I mean, you can't really say you've made it to level 9 in Tetris by starting at level 1 in an e-penis topic because everyone can do that. But with the "points" to these achievements, something like that would get counted to your gamerscore.

From what I've seen, it seems some people have gone from buying and playing games they want to buy because it'll be fun for them, to buying and playing games that will be fun for them AND because they'll get these points.

I know that doesn't sound like a bad thing, but I'm using "AND" because I can't think of a better way to say it. "OR" doesn't quite work either.

Okay, having typed all that, I think I know what my asking for. Because of the gamerscore, have you gone from buying and playing games you want to have because they will be fun for you, to buying and playing games that will quickly and easily increase your gamerscore while having fun with the game.......not necessarily take a back seat......but more like 2nd place, anyway?

Or have you noticed that you buy more games because they will easily increase your gamerscore while having fun with the game takes 2nd place?

TL;DR: Click this and tell me if this a problem.

I hope this makes sense.

APZonerunner

To give a short answer... I think achievements are a fantastic addition and one of the most ingenius ideas of the Xbox team.

By making all games into one game per se, they've made the Xbox Live community so much more competitive. There are problems with achievement whores, but for me personally it isn't a problem.

If anything, it's driven me to push myself further on games - to go back and get high scores or re-complete the game on hard or go specifically for more headshot kills online... It's actually made my gaming experience better and richer.

Drez

Coincidence?

I'm writing a counterpoint to an article written by one of our writers over at Etoychest, for tomorrow, about this very subject.

No Great Name

I don't understand them and I find them laughable.

japan

Anecdote time:

I know a guy who owns a 360, but never owned an original Xbox. Recently he picked up Psychonauts, since it was recently added to the BC list, and everybody he knows raved about it.

He played it for a bit then stopped, we were talking about it and I asked why. He said: "It's just when I play it, I'm always thinking 'I could be playing Gears and getting achievements.'"

I don't know what this adds to the discussion, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Bbaj

I actually like achievements, they sometimes give me a little push to play a game a little more, or try something different within a game.

BTP

Drez wrote:

Coincidence?

I'm writing a counterpoint to an article written by one of our writers over at Etoychest, for tomorrow, about this very subject.

Um....yes it is.....wow.

Link to it when you're done, please.

BTP

japan wrote:

Anecdote time:

I know a guy who owns a 360, but never owned an original Xbox. Recently he picked up Psychonauts, since it was recently added to the BC list, and everybody he knows raved about it.

He played it for a bit then stopped, we were talking about it and I asked why. He said: "It's just when I play it, I'm always thinking 'I could be playing Gears and getting achievements.'"

I don't know what this adds to the discussion, but it's interesting nonetheless.

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!

Drez

Anyway, my opinion could best be summed up thus:

I think they are amazingly great, and the most intelligent and excellent videogame concept to come out in the entire console era, especially considering they feel like such a simple, little thing, and it's hard to imagine why we've gone so long without them.

If God came to me and made me choose between Multiplayer and Achievements, I would choose Achievements. Multiplayer can go away given that ultimatum.

Drez

BTP wrote:

Drez wrote:

Coincidence?

I'm writing a counterpoint to an article written by one of our writers over at Etoychest, for tomorrow, about this very subject.

Um....yes it is.....wow.

Link to it when you're done, please.

I will.

No Great Name

Playing with my cousin he's always like, "yes I got an achievement" to which I always reply, "who cares?".

It's almost like playing the games stopped being the reward for him.

But I think he quickly gout out of that rut after he owned the 360 for a month or two.

It was kind of annoying trying to sleep at 4 AM with all of geometry wars colors in my face because he "had to survive for 500,000 or some shit".

Kewop Decam

These points area a measurement of how much time you waste playing videogames. Someone on here has 12,000+.... TWLEVE THOUSAND PLUS!

Go outside, do something else for a change.

Gorilla Salad

Somewhat important. I played PDZ longer than I would have because of them(PDZ is fun, but I would have stopped playing it entirely if there were no acheivments. Since there were, I played for a bit longer.)
And COD2, I went through(most of) veteran mode for the achievments. God damn that was frustrating.

Der Waffle Mous

SirToons wrote:

It was kind of annoying trying to sleep at 4 AM with all of geometry wars colors in my face because he "had to survive for 500,000 or some shit".

Man, someone missed out on Arcades in the 80's.

Renzo

I think they're cool, and sometimes they push me to play a game over again on hard or play more rounds of multiplayer, but only to a certain degree.

Case in point: Gears of War has an achievement for completing one full game of ranked multiplayer. One full game can be made up of several rounds. Just hop in a game and play (well or otherwise) through an entire game. This is by far the easiest multiplayer achievement to attain, but I haven't done it. Nor do I plan to, because I don't enjoy Gears multiplayer at all. So I'm not going to do something I don't want to do for an achievement, but if I was going to already, or if the achievement is easy enough to get, sure, I'll do it.

And then there are games like Test Drive: Unlimited that integrate achievements into the progression of the game. So if you do well at the game, you get the achievements. I think that's the way it should be for the most part, but crazy shit like "Jump off the Agency Building" in Crackdown is cool too.

Tube

I find the whole concept a bit silly personally, but it's cool that people enjoy them. I'm not really in favour of seeing games as a form of achievement though. I mean "I could be getting achievements on Gears of War"? It doesn't mean anything, no one should really care, and it's a little sad.

Invisible

I think the majority of them are stupid, but the completionist in me wants to collect them all. The ones that push you to do certain things (don't kill any enemies in this level or get an insane amount of points) are interesting, in how they give you an incentive (a meaningless one) to do something you normally wouldn't.

japan

BTP wrote:

japan wrote:

Anecdote time:

I know a guy who owns a 360, but never owned an original Xbox. Recently he picked up Psychonauts, since it was recently added to the BC list, and everybody he knows raved about it.

He played it for a bit then stopped, we were talking about it and I asked why. He said: "It's just when I play it, I'm always thinking 'I could be playing Gears and getting achievements.'"

I don't know what this adds to the discussion, but it's interesting nonetheless.

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!

It struck me as odd, though. It wasn't a competitive thing (like the comic implies) for him so much as some kind of misdirected pack-rat instinct. I can't imagine myself putting down a newly purchased game that I was just getting into to go back to a game I'd already played to death.

For myself (I don't own a 360) I can see the appeal in some achievements, generally those that are a little weird or encourage you to play the game in different ways, like the Geometry Wars "pacifism" achievement, or Ridge Racer 6's "360" achievement. I don't think I'll start replaying games over and over at different difficulties for the sake of my Gamerscore.

In fact, is there any way not to make your Gamerscore public?

The_Dciple

They're a nice novelty.

Achievements really serve no important purpose for me but it's nice to be rewarded for playing a game through a higher difficulty or doing something out of the usual during gameplay.

Renzo

I want Gamerpics and Themes to be unlocked as you get some of the more interesting or difficult achievements. THAT would be a good way to get me to actually do them.

Kewop Decam

Renzo wrote:

I want Gamerpics and Themes to be unlocked as you get some of the more interesting or difficult achievements. THAT would be a good way to get me to actually do them.

yea, then I guess they would be worth something. Unlocking achievements is pretty stupid. You should be able to cash em in for something. I dunno, like a t-shirt or something.

No Great Name

Kewop Decam wrote:

Renzo wrote:

I want Gamerpics and Themes to be unlocked as you get some of the more interesting or difficult achievements. THAT would be a good way to get me to actually do them.

yea, then I guess they would be worth something. Unlocking achievements is pretty stupid. You should be able to cash em in for something. I dunno, like a t-shirt or something.

Or candy!

Or a slinky!

Karf

Gamerscore is a brilliant way to get people to buy more games.

Seriously.

That being said, I do like the achievement system. I find it to be very rewarding for me... But I do know that it's very rewarding for Microsoft as well.

Renzo

I thought it'd be nice to get, say, the Berserker for a gamerpic after you kill the Berserker the first time. Just unlock the icon for the achievement as a gamerpic. Or a pic of RAAM after you kill him. Junk like that.

Sanius

So and so.

They're a motivator for me to beat that one difficulty, but I don't buy games for them.

Drez

You unlock gamerpics for completing all the achievements in Cloning Clyde. I agree, that would be very cool.

I like how Dead Rising's achievements ran parallel to the unlockables you get over the course of the game.

Mattie

I really like them. They make me want to play games longer than I probably would have. I would have stopped playing Oblivion after completing the main quest but getting a few more points drove me to complete the rest of the guild quests. I check other people's scores sometimes. If someone has a 20K+ score I like to see if thats because they just play a ton of games or beat a few handfuls of them at high difficulty.

It was also pretty neat when I got my gamerscore to be 9999.

Graviija

They're neat, but I don't pay attention to my gamer score at all. When I get an achievement, it's usually a "hey, cool" moment, but nothing more.

The Listener

They're a cool novelty and whatnot, and I think really help pull a lot more length into a game. I don't really see much negative about them, I suppose. All I know is I probally have the least of all of the 360 owners here.

Golden Leg

It's a novel thing to show your fellow gamers, but other than that it doesn't really affect me.

RainbowDespair

I like them. Now see, before I owned a 360, I thought they were silly. But after getting one, I think they're a great idea. When done well, they increase replay value and overall enjoyment noticeably at next to no effort on the part of the designers.

Personally, I don't think having an overall score that combines all of your games has much point to them since games vary greatly on the ease and difficulty of their achievements. One game could give you 1000 points just for doing all the things you would normally do to beat the game and another game could only give out points for extremely difficult things. Not to mention, the retail versus XBLA difference - someone who mostly plays XBLA games isn't going to have many points total since each XBLA game only has 200 points available compared to 1000 for a standard retail game.

On the other hand, on an individual game basis, I think they're a great idea. When done well, they provide gamers with new goals to try out that extend a game's longevity. Plus, it's fun to look at your friends' achievement stats and see which games they've been playing.

So yeah, someone with high overall score? In my book that just means they play more games than they probably ought to. On the other hand, if I see someone has the full 200 points at Geometry Wars or Mutant Storm, I know right away that they probably have a very high level of skill at action games. And it could lead to some fun chatting while playing online. "Hey man, I saw you were really good at Lumines. I love that game!"

Mattie

SirToons wrote:

I don't understand them and I find them laughable.

I'd just like to say that this guy seems to pipe in with a douchey comment in almost every 360 related thread. Someone break his fingers please.

OneEyedJack

The only thing I hate is that I can do something really hard and get like 10, 20 points while joe douchebag can play one fucking game of madden and get 100.

Zek

Achievements are a cool idea that appeals to the completionist in me, but I also get easily discouraged by them because some of them are way too demanding and would force me to play a game for far longer than I find it fun. For example, Gears of War has one for 10,000 kills in ranked Live games... That's just too much. And when I realize I'm never going to get that one, I start to wish the system wasn't there in the first place. I don't really care about my Gamerscore - it's more about how many games you buy than anything else - so the main appeal of the Gamerscore for me is being able to get the "perfect" score.

Dee Kae

Mattie wrote:

SirToons wrote:

I don't understand them and I find them laughable.

I'd just like to say that this guy seems to pipe in with a douchey comment in almost every 360 related thread. Someone break his fingers please.

Odd, I agree with what he's said.

They're cute and all, but I find them ultimately useless.

No Great Name

DoNotPursueLuBu wrote:

Mattie wrote:

SirToons wrote:

I don't understand them and I find them laughable.

I'd just like to say that this guy seems to pipe in with a douchey comment in almost every 360 related thread. Someone break his fingers please.

Odd, I agree with what he's said.

They're cute and all, but I find them ultimately useless.

Not enough finger breaking.

fragglefart

I like them a lot. My gamerscore is pretty healthy, but I play the 360 far less than I ought to, like all games these days, due to other real world interests like lying around, and going to work. I could happily whore Gamerscore all day, many of the targets are fun, others... not so much.

There are some achievements I really, really want, or wanted (the top-tier Geometry Wars ones spring to mind) and I'm damned proud to have hit them. A-Grading Kameo were some of my favourite achievements. The Uno "Bluff" achievement was cool. Viva Pinata has loads of interesting/funny achievements. Others are way too easy - FNR3, for example. Others were bloody hard - some of the DOA4 vs CPU Gold challenges, no idea why I perservered in getting those, the bastards.

Off the top of my head I can think of dozens that I could get pretty quickly if I could be bothered, and finally got around to, still not played Gears ranked, need to get a decent co-op Contra score, Target Markers in Lost Planet, finally hit 50 hours in Viva Pinata, Clothes Horse in Dead Rising, finishing Splinter Cell and playing through the co-op challenges, the GRAW co-op levels etc.

Right now I'm working on beating Lost Planet on "Extreme" mode. It is pretty bloody hard, but I want to do it. The fact I get a big shiny achievement if I manage it helps to motivate me when the game is merrily raping me to death, it is a nice reward.

I've always been a completionist within reason, I'm not going to grind something for hours and hours, so this system is only an extension of what has come before, those little challenges which games have always set, this is a nice way to recognise them.

I would love to have, for example a "120 stars" achievement for Mario 64. Or a "100% completed, all unlocks unlocked" award for Goldeneye.

Yeah, achievements are pretty cool.

Gaming-Module

I never really cared about the gamerscore after I learned its true nature. You see, my brother was the one who really got me on the 360 bandwagon. I would have been happy to just stick with my Gamecube and X-Box. One of the things that really got me on board was the achievements and gamerscore, because he told me that you can spend the points on the marketplace.

Once I learned the true nature of them, I almost skipped out on it altogether, if not for Oblivion's launch and the promise of Dead Rising.

Pancake

Renzo wrote:

I thought it'd be nice to get, say, the Berserker for a gamerpic after you kill the Berserker the first time. Just unlock the icon for the achievement as a gamerpic. Or a pic of RAAM after you kill him. Junk like that.

Actually, beat the game on Insane and you do unlock a new gamer pic. You also unlock one for getting the "Seriously..." achievement.

I, myself, love achievements. I don't usually go out of my way to get them (not that I have many games for my 360), but I enjoy trying to unlock the single-player ones at least, and the multiplayer ones that just happen eventually like Rainbow Six: Vegas' achievement for getting 100 total kills or 50 kills with explosives.

I have to say, though, that the "Be the #1 ranked player!" ones are pretty stupid.

LockeCole

I love me some achievements.

Other than that, I got nothing.

Variable

i don't have a 360 but I don't see how they can be a negative. It doesn't hurt you if other people go for it, and it only adds replayability to games. I know a lot of people here already play games to death, setting their own goals and rules. Why not have that marked off?