Like all threads I start there has to be some type of story so here it is. Don’t worry its not a novel… this time.
The debt problem I had was very well advertised throughout the forum. In fact I was pretty much selling off my game collection to pay it off and many forumers helped out and bought my stuff. Mainly because you all are great guys and willing to help out one of your own when they are in need. Well I got a bit of good news this week and I just got a new job offer and it pays a whole heck of a lot more than my current job. Needless to say I jumped on it and in 3 weeks will be starting a new and exciting career.
My wife decided to get me a little present to celebrate my new found fortune. When I came home from work last night I found something waiting for me. Namely an X-box 360 Elite with Dead or Alive 4, Transformers the game, 1 year of live, and 1600 Microsoft points. God I love this woman! So while she was painting her latest masterpiece I decided to hook up the 360, set up live, and proceeded to have giant transforming robots start kicking each other asses.
This is when I started to notice something I wasn’t used to. After starting the game I was told to hunt down the Decepticons as the crash landed. So I transform into a car and I get a pop up message saying “achievement unlocked Transform and roll out”. Whaa??? Well I decided to reset out to the dashboard to see what is up and I see I am starting to amass a gamer score. And I see that I can look at the achievements let to achieve for the rest of the game.
Well I am a questioning person by nature so I started to think “Do achievements add replay value and make me want to go a little bit faster hit a little bit harder or are they a checklist of what I need to do in order to consider this game beaten?” .
Don’t get me wrong I love the idea of achievements but I am just wondering if these goals add something to the overall game or are they something to keep you playing your 360 and forget about other games on other systems. Also other than “wow that is a nice score” does your gamer score do anything for you on live?[/FONT]
TL;DR: Got a new job, wife bought me a 360, played transformers and unlocked an achievement, looked a achievement list, thought “Do achievements add replay value and make me want to go a little bit faster hit a little bit harder or are they a checklist of what I need to do in order to consider this game beaten?”, does your gamer score do anything for you other than a score?
Also this thread can double as “talk about your best most fun achievements” , “recommend some good live and retail 360 games" and how do I set up a custom dashboard via my PC” too.
And my gamertag is DragonSamaMach1 if anyone wants to play me somtime.
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Or a checklist.
If people hate it, that's something I can't understand. It's just a number, after all.
I'm personally indifferent to it. It's nice that it's there though.
Of course, many games use achievements purely as "checklist" too. Gears of War is an example.
Forsake, Warlock of Stonemaul
games like PoP Classic with its "Finish without dying" goal will haunt my dreams. but got damned it, i will get it.
then there are games like gears of war. i will never ever ever ever ever get any of those damn ".....while playing a ranked match" ones. i'll probably never get the Dom ones either. everyone i'm interested in playing co-op with has already beaten the game 20 times over and has no intrest in helping me finish those off.
SSB code- 0216-0856-6886 PM me so I can add you
It is a strange sense of geek pride; I don't mean the Gamerscore itself, I could give a shit about the arbirary point values associated to the tasks, but the percentage of Achievements themselves is tantalizing. I love shmups, and I want nothing more than to get all of the Achievements in Geometry Wars, Heavy Weapon, Aegis Wing, etc. And it's not even really the fact that they're on display for other people to see, although I'm sure that's part of it -- I want them because they're challenges set up by the game itself.
The trick, of course, is that the Achievements actually make sense/aren't bullshit. The Geometry Wars ones are a good example: Most of them are either reaching a score milestone (250k, 500k, 1m) or hitting the milestone without dying. Those are ones you would get by playing normally anyway. But the other ones actually change the way you play the game: The "Pacifism" Achievement is unlocked by surviving for 60 seconds without firing. I decided to try it out, and it drastically changes the way the game plays. (Well, for 60 seconds, anyway.) And then the (Quartermaster?) Achievement (I forget the name) is unlocked by amassing 9 smart bombs, which means you have to survive long enough to score points without using any bombs.
Things like that are cool: They're challenges just there for people who want more out of the game, or want a different way to play it. If there were Achievements in the next Legend of Zelda game, you can bet one of them will be "Three-heart run," or in a Metroid game it'd be "Finish in under 5 hours" or " finish without the Ice Beam." But the entire aggregate nature of Gamerscore is just kind of goofy, because it implies cross-game comparisons of skill. Example: in Guitar Hero II the insanely difficult "Beat Jordan on Expert" Achievement is worth 30 points. You can also earn 30 points in Madden '06 by ... scoring a touchdown in an offline game.
Also, I'm really in the minority here, but I freaking love the concept of the insanely difficult leaderboard/online ranking based Achievements. A lot of 360 owners have the mentality that they're entitled to all of the Achievements, and they cry when there are bullshit/difficult goals to reach. But hey, if the developers think the guy who's good enough to be the No. 1 ranked player in a game deserves an Achievement, then make it so. And if you see people who actually just left their 360 on for eight hours straight solely to get the Committed Achievement, then they deserve the ridicule they get.
... oh, and to answer your other question directly: Gamerscore does nothing other than make you feel better about yourself. You can't trade them in for MS Points or anything, although there has been at least one sponsored contest where in a certain time period, an X gain in Gamerscore got people prizes.
I prefer things like that if they're humorous or unique: a bit like how some MP games "award" titles like "Most Cowardly" or "Suicide King" or "Most Dedicated Homophobic Spammer".
I usually do off-the wall stuff in games when I want another excuse to play them, I bet there would be an achivement for taking down El Gigante with a knife in Resident Evil 4 if it was on the 360, or playing through God Hand without picking up items or something similar. I like to challenge myself in games I really enjoy and sometimes going for an achivement is somthing different, challenging and fun I can try and get proof that I actually did it.
Sometimes it's just a nice surprise to get a message saying that you kicked serious ass by killing 10 players in a row without dying in Rainbow 6 Vegas multiplayer, but most of the time I usually ignore achivements, only if they spark my interest. Speaking of Dead Rising though, I'd be willing to try and get every achivement in that simply because I love the game and want to get the most playtime out of it.
Just a note, you don't actually need to exit out of the game to check those kinds of things. If you get any kind of pop up notification like that (achievement unlocked, friend logs on), if you hit the guide button when that happens, you will be taken to a screen related to that specific item (so, in your case, you would have been taken to the achievement list for Transformers). If you hit the guide button any other time mid game, you will just be taken to the start of that interface, where you have access to those other items. Also, normally, when you hit the guide button mid game, it will pause the game automatically for you, but DOA4 doesn't, for some odd reason, so keep that in mind while playing it . . .
the pop up window should be enough to tell you why you got it
True enough, since that update that added the title of the achievement as well as the score associated. If you wanted the specific details, you would still have to go to the list though (assuming they decided to list the details there and not a vague description).
edit: there, now I can read it without feeling skullfucked.
It is now. Before it was all "Achievement Unlocked" with the subtext of "ooooh, we ain't tellin' you which! Press the jewel! Go on! Press it! It's in the list. There, you pressed and now you know, don't you feel better?"
To me they're a bit checklisty, but it doesn't stop me from trying to get them. I recognize some of them are outside of my scope and/or patience level, so I write them off.
I'm not terribly concerned if I have all the badges and medals, but when I get them I'm happy and it's cool to look back at.
See, I don't understand this way of thinking.
It's an extra feature added to games. It's for fun. Don't go for achievements then, if you don't like it.
I...don't strive for them. I just said it's fun when they naturally show up. I don't go straight for them because I don't care to spend all my time getting knife kills, it ruins the fun.
Did you read my post or are you just looking for somebody to yell at for being a stat whore?
Hm
I didn't realize I was yelling.
What I'm saying is, yes, they give you the achievements that you need to get, but if you don't want them, you can simply not follow them. Most achievements are gained as you progress anyway, it would seem.
The HOME concept of trophies is cool, but I couldn't see myself wandering into someones "apartment" to look at all their trophies. With Live I do the "compare" games thing with friends, its like 2 clicks and I can see what they've pulled off in a game and what I can shoot for. It's like a friendly competition.
They can do this now. If you beat Gears of War on insane, you get a special gamerpic. You also get another for one of the other achievements in the game (the 10,000 kill one I think). I should be more widespread though . .
I suppose giving them out for free after you've bought the game wouldn't let them nickel and dime you for paying for them on the marketplace.
Now that I think about, there's quite a few other games that give you icons too, they just don't let you know about them until you go into your gamerpic files and look for yourself. I'm always surprised to see a bunch of new ones in there when I check.
Sorry I typed up the post in Word. I do that for almost every post I make anymore so I don't make messed up spelling mistakes. From now one I'll be sure to set the font to Verdana.
I like the way Ninja Bee games do it. When I get an achievement I get a little "Hooray for me!" popup telling me what I earned and how I earned it. Same thing applies to gamerpics. I think I earned two in Band of Bugs, and so far I've earned one in Outpost Kaloki X.
Personally, i love the hell out of achievements. In fact, even though i had beat tomb raider legend months ago, i picked it up again to attempt all the time trial achievements and whatnot.
really as for adding replay value, it really depends on the game. I mean like, the TMNT game all the achievements can be earned in a single play through (4 hours). Or hell, i'm not ashamed to admit even though i hate basketball, and therefore any game based on the sport, i rented NBA 2k6, and earned all 1000 points in less than a 1/2 hour.
but yeah, i'm a huge fan and supporter of the system, its not for everyone, and if you dont like them, fine. I for one feel that its great fun to try and get that elusive whatever achievement. Even though there really isnt anyway to show it off. I mean honestly even if your interested in achievements and comparing them to other peoples who really checks more than the base score?
Check out the achievements for that one, and then play it for about 10min...
My chief complaint is with games that use achievements as an excuse not to put any real unlockables in the game. That's just lazy.
Yeah, fuck those score achievements. Theyre ridiculous.
I do like achievements, because it gives me the incentive to play the game more. For some reason I get satisfaction out of getting points. I just wish more games had a even mix of easy and hard achievements. Some great games have achievements that take forever to get (like Oblivion) while some meh games have ridiculously easy achievements (TMNT).
they were just a blast to get. (no pun intended.)
Edit: Viral achievements are pretty cool. I earned the "6 degrees of small arms" or whatever the first night it was released though.