Community MetaSteam | January 2023 - A new season begins

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Avern

MetaMember
May 14, 2020
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I want to disagree with this take, but I'm not sure I can. Because I want to like achievements, and I think they're cool in theory... But in practice they almost always suck.

I don't care about cheevos during my first playthrough. But if I want more out of a game after rolling credits, they can act as a roadmap for that. But in practice, devs never design them for this! It's always scads of achievements that you either can't miss or will naturally obtain during a first playthrough, and maybe a few achievements for doing key pieces of side content. Then you get the awful ones that encourage grinding or just playing in a miserable way.

But some of them are fun. I like the ones for things like clearing higher difficulty settings, optional post-game challenges, or just doing weird challenge runs. But even those get held back! It feels like developers often won't include tough achievements to avoid spooking achievement hunters who want an easy 1000 gamerscore.

Cuphead gave me an achievement for getting a single S-rank, but didn't bother including one for S-ranking the entire game, even though it was a fun challenge. Sekiro gave me an achievement for grinding to buy all the skills, but won't ask me to beat the game without Kuro's charm. Wouldn't want Joe "All-The-Plats" Gamersman to buy Avatar - The Video Game instead.

Achievements deserve better. And gamerscores deserve to be nuked from orbit.
 

Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
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A level designer will not make a better level just because some unrelated person doesn't make an achievement for some hours.
And a game will not be better because the equivalent of 5-10k Dollars are spent on achievements.

Are achievements on single-player, linear, narrative games unnecessary? Sure.
But there are thousands of games with achievements that urges the player to do something different, play other nations, try other strategies, etc.
 

Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
1,703
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Achievements are... not really achievements anymore now.
Back when it really became popular on Xbox (but it did exist before of course, in other forms), some games like Dead Rising were just a ton of fun thanks to them, with little side objectives to accomplish just for fun.

Now, they are pretty much entirely milestones to accomplish, with no flavor, just here as a reminder of what you did (if the text even says so...).
Or worse, a checklist of the content in the game, like joining all factions in a Souls game, collecting all the bobbles and such.
It's not here for fun, it's here to yet again add to the engagement counter - to keep players playing and aware of what else they could do... and nudge them toward doing it even if they wouldn't do so organically.

It's all too often just another way to add filler and make sure that players get their XXX hours of "content" from the game, just like every "Ubi formula".

However I don't think it has much of an impact when developing the core game itself, but it sure is another way to warp the end product with the rest of the tricks used to keep the player's dopamine levels high and more likely to both play and pay more in the long term.

And as far as I'm concerned, I don't care about achievements, or my backlog, or how many games I have on Steam.
Because all of those things are also the exact same problem of keeping engagement going (and not done by publishers but other players in this case), and everyone would be better off without the endless stream of manipulation and enablers that we're bombarded with.
 

Hektor

Autobahnraser
Nov 1, 2018
6,154
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Achievements are garbage because they are dull AF tasks for people that enjoy the dumbest form of busywork.

The only good achievements in games were Battlefield 2 and Team Fortress 2.

The former simply had medals you obtained automarically by playing very well, simply giving you a bit of bragging rights the same way a rank does in most multiplayer games nowadays, and Team Fortress 2 because most achievements were ultra specific in a "hey, this happened" sort of way like "Killing A soldier That's Rocket Jumping with a Rocket while playing as Soldier during a Rocketjump".

The idea with achievements should be that I, as a player, would want to look at your achievements and think "damn, he must be good".
But because they are just glorified collectibles that require 0 kill, no one cares about them but yourselfs, which makes it borderline sad to think of achievement hunters that brag about having 500K gamerscore, let alone those that just buy games for "ez plat"
 

Joe Spangle

Playing....
Apr 17, 2019
2,473
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Yeah i kind of agree with Line , They were/are great when properly implemented and the freshness of them back on the 360 was fun.

Now I'm pretty meh on them. Not too bothered.

Don't think that they actively harm a game though and lots of people enjoy them so.....meh.

Maybe if there was an option to turn them off when you start a game?
 

ExistentialThought

Coffee Lover ♥☕
Feb 29, 2020
1,657
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I like achievements in some sandbox games (e.g. most grand strategies). For something like EU4, they give you ideas of what to play next or how to play as. That said, it feels like a fool's errand to try to 100% most sandbox-y games giving the sheer amount of time it would take. :ripblob: And even then I think you could achieve similar satisfaction through in-game unlockables when players try new things and not tying that to an achievement.

I think a handful of single player games have incorporated achievements well into a game (e.g. Wandersong), but otherwise it is few and far between. And as others have said, I never care what about what achievements others have or have not earned, they feel like purely for the person earning them.

Otherwise I am indifferent to most achievements and do not go too far out of my way to achieve much in life games.
 
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Censored

I didn't delete that post!. Get my post back!.
Oct 8, 2021
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just bought some games on Steam


Evil Tonight is quite good.
Always wanted to try Wizardry games :p. It's the game that inspired Dragon Quest videogames and that's the main reason this was a "big" saga in Japan.

I couldn't care less about achievements.
 

Dragon1893

MetaMember
Apr 17, 2019
1,709
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Never cared about achievements. I guess it's nice when you do something cool and get one for it without expecting it but I forget they even exist until they pop up.
I always find it hilarious when I see people say things like "getting this achievement was the most frustrating thing I've ever done" or "it ruined the game for me". It literally sounds like someone is forcing them to do it. When you stop having fun and are just doing busywork to fill a checklist I think you should take a step back. That's just me though.
 

Censored

I didn't delete that post!. Get my post back!.
Oct 8, 2021
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Where's the hentai
Oh, I recently bought Secret Pie - Festival DLC on Steam which isn't shown XD (I like the korean look -it's a chinese game-) and "How a Healthy Hentai Administers Public Service!" on other platform, but I have to get some time and install and test it on Steam Deck with its header, art, logo & background images.
 

inky

🤔
Apr 17, 2019
999
2,797
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There's nothing surprising about Ubisoft failures.

They went from trendsetters to trendchasers, even cannibalizing and regurgitating their own design ad nauseum. They alienated one of the top three platforms in gaming, and they can't for the life of them scope their projects down appropriately, instead they keep scoping up and throwing millions at stale fads well beyond the sell date.

Deserved.
 

prudis

anime occult member
Sep 19, 2018
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The Kingdom of Beer and Porn
twitter.com
There's nothing surprising about Ubisoft failures
just look at what Yves thinks about it


Yves Guillemot, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said "We are clearly disappointed by our recent performance. We are facing contrasted market dynamics as the industry continues to shift towards mega-brands and everlasting live games, in the context of worsening economic conditions affecting consumer spending.
 
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dex3108

MetaMember
Dec 20, 2018
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It all started with abandoning Steam
nods wisely
It all started when Ubisoft started chasing trends and not setting them. Remember how EA chased trends last gen (one of those was Ubisoft the game) and got burned hard? So they rebooted and started doing what Ubisoft did at the beginning of last gen up until late last gen, diversifying their lineup and making use of their IPs in various ways. Ubisoft went opposite way and started chasing trends with every IP they own.
 

Derrick01

MetaMember
Oct 6, 2018
1,217
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I mean it's what I would do if I owned a large-ish company and they came to me offering that I take on their dozens of studios and like 12000 employees or whatever absurd number it is now on top of their mostly dead or dying IPs and failure after failure live service titles. What exactly would I get out of this other than having to clean up that garbage pile?

That's like buying a billion dollar house and when you go inside it's every episode of hoarders piled into one building.
 

dex3108

MetaMember
Dec 20, 2018
3,491
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I'm playing FarCry 6 now and I'm quite liking it! Only Ubisoft does games like that. Also loved AC Origins. They can make great games if they want. Such a shame that they are chasing that next big GAAS game.
FC6 had witing so bad that i rolled my eyes ever few hours.
 
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Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
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I mean it's what I would do if I owned a large-ish company and they came to me offering that I take on their dozens of studios and like 12000 employees or whatever absurd number it is now on top of their mostly dead or dying IPs and failure after failure live service titles. What exactly would I get out of this other than having to clean up that garbage pile?

That's like buying a billion dollar house and when you go inside it's every episode of hoarders piled into one building.
The only one buying anything from Ubisoft would be the one who can pick and choose specific IP's (*may or my not include the devs)
 
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Mor

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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Yeah, this makes more sense and it's more likely.
 
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Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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About Ubisoft:
Obviously they went down the path of failure when they refused to recognize that Might and Magic X: Legacy was the best game they made in the 2010s.

About achievements:
Of all the trends you could call out for negatively impacting game design, I think going after achievements in particular is just silly. As others have pointed out, games have had stupid busywork long before achievements were a thing. Achievements haven't really changed that -- there are still some games with fun and unique additional challenges, and some in which you collect N doodads. Sometimes even both!
The only thing achievements provide is an external, (semi-)permanent, and sharable record of what you did when in which game. I personally find that very useful, even in games which just have "complete chapter X"-style "achievements".
 
typo

LEANIJA

MetaMember
May 5, 2019
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Austria
collect N doodads.
that reminds me of TotalBiscuits apt description of a typical quest in World of Warcraft – "collect 10 bear arses" (and I also remember someone pointing out how hilarious it is that in WOW you come to a new village and get greeted by total strangers who immediately trust you and then casually ask you to murder a bunch of people and/or animals; but thats unrelated to achivements, thats just silly video game logic :D )

Speaking of WOW, the achievements in that game were well implemented at first, giving cool stuff and titles and they were hard to obtain but not always a grind. But of course they kept adding and adding and adding and its now a huge mountain of achivements, grind + stuff. But thats also an ancient MMO, so its to be expected.

Generally, I dont really care for achievements. They can be fun, but most of the time I'll ignore them. If I notice I can do them and they are actually a fun challenge, I might do them–in games I love. I did a 100% of Deus Ex Human Revolution and Elden Ring, for example.

I do know a guy who seems to play just for achievements in a very unhealthy way, obsessing over them. Not great.
 
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Aaron D.

MetaMember
Jul 10, 2019
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Incredible value. Thanks for the heads-up.

.........................

On Achievements.

Dead Rising and modern Hitman remind me that Achievements can be fun af when implemented intelligently.

I love chasing non-linear and sometimes creative/hilarious game goals (Frank the Pimp, etc).

It's also fun to see where your Friends and Global Community rank on leaderboards.

All good, imo.

I've always felt like it was something you could just ignore if you're not into it.
 
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