Topic: Nintendo filing patent for Achivements.

Universe Sandbox has an achievement:
One Year:
Rule over your universe for 12 months.

Now let's be clear, this isn't 12 months arbitrary game time, this is 12 months real time.

Stanley Parable:
Commitment
Play The Stanley Parable for the entire duration of a Tuesday.

Garry's Mod:
Addict
You have wasted a year of your life playing GMod!

There are three ways I can see to get these achievements:
1. Actually do them. (good luck with that)
2. Idle (waste of power and system resources).
3. Cheat them (the most reasonable way to get them, but then you aren't really achieving anything are you?)

One full year of your life playing a single game? wtf???

Yeah, but it doesn't have to be all at once. In Universal sandbox there is also this one:

Startup Too Many
Start Universe Sandbox 10^4 = 10000 times

I got a program to get that one for me

To those that say they don't get why people dislike something that can just be ignored, the reasons for that are stated well in this thread:

• To those that like immersion, it breaks immersion.
• To those who can't ignore things easily, it's distracting.
• To bring up my point from earlier, stupid achievements take away from the meaning of real achievements, and making a console-wide achievements system only encourages the stupid ones.
• To those who are completionists, the aforementioned "stupid ones," such as the examples given by @shaneoh, make completing the game more tedious, or even virtually impossible without cheats.

If you don't understand it on a personal level, or you can't relate to it, that's fine, but you've been given every opportunity to "get" it.

And an additional note, if you say "but Nicolai, most games have achievements anyway, what's the difference?" Well, each game gets to handle achievements in its own way. A moody game might want to have achievements run in the background, and not pop up during active gameplay. A game with a higher ESRB rating might want to use tantalizing names for their achievements, but doesn't want to worry about them being posted for everyone to see on Miiverse. Some games make no sense having achievements, and don't need the pressure of adding aforementioned "stupid" ones.

I don't personally believe an achievement system would be terrible, but those that do have given legitimate reasons, and it seems like people arguing against that just aren't reading those reasons.

"Stupid" achievement meaning nearly impossible, or something an ape could do?

@StarDust4Ever: Both. Any achievement that doesn't work well because of the lack of thought put into it.

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't been around a lot lately - real life is important and all that lol

Ultimately, this is all silly. Achievements are optional. Optional content is optional. Irritation with optional content is entirely a personal issue that should have no bearing on whether or not the system remains/is implemented for the masses.

If it's bad enough and you are someone who can't handle distractions (welcome to video games, by the way...uh...anyone smell the irony?) or don't want your "immersion" broken (fancy that plastic thing you're holding to control the game, eh?) you can always vote with your wallet and get rid of/don't buy the system.

Optional:
Adjective
left to one's choice; not required or mandatory

If they were optional, we could disable them and hide the notifications. I like to have subtitles on and it irritates me to no end to have something pop over the top of them. It's something shoved in our faces, there is nothing "optional" about it.

What a cop out

Achievements in their comprehensive mandatory way are generally terrible. Awful even. If a game wants to have achievements it of course can and does, and works well as it is already. Stamps were a nice version that Nintendo did too.

@Nicolai great post. Those are indeed some of the reasons achievements suck. They also actually act as spoilers sometimes. To sum up, they suck.

Shoved in your face =/= mandatory. You have the option to ignore them if you don't want to do them, they're not mandatory to finish the game.

I have been trying to ignore this thread but just had another thought. Let's say you like to 100% Zelda games. Right now 100% generally means collecting all the items and finishing all the quests. However, with Achievements 100% requires more. 100% requires finishing all achievements, possibly speed run achievements or repetitive task achievements. The problem gets even worst with System Wide achievements. Now other people can see if you have completed all the achievements so you can't lie or have your own definition of 100% or completed. The definition of 100% a game or fully completing a game is defined by achievements. Just some extra thoughts about Achievements

Okay please tell me how I can avoid getting this "achievement" in Universal Sandbox while still allowing me to use the software:
Startup the Universe:
Start Universe Sandbox at least once

Please tell me how that is not mandatory for using the software?

@DefHalan:
Exactly. My definition of finishing Animal Crossing City Folk was to have all the gold tools, all mortgages paid off and all the items for the museum. Noone can tell me that I haven't 100%ed the game just because I didn't think that getting all the items a worthwhile task.

I never bothered much with 100%ing stuff. I played the mess out of Zelda Link Between Worlds and beat the game and got all but six heart pieces in the game. So I had 18 hearts on my life bar and the few heart pieces left over were some busy speedrun and minigame type side quests which I couldn't be bothered with. But I beat the game. I collected all the lost squids. Got all the weapin upgrades. Defeated every boss. So what if soe assinine achievement can't be gotten? Beat the freakking game without a game over or deaths? Die once and you've got to reset your quest? Eff that crap. You can definitely 100% a game without getting platinum or whatnot. It's called completing all sidequests and collecting every item in a game. For example, do I really need to spend ten hours fishing in Zelda? Hypothetical achievement right there. And reallly achievements/trophies are not that distracting. In the PS3 games I've played, a small text message scrolls on the top or bottom edge of the screen and does not interrupt gameplay. No big deal. If a developer wants to sound the trumpets and pause the game while giving you a big dog and pony show every time you unlock something, then it is their fault for breaking the flow of their own game to notify you of something. But the unobtrusive notifications or text tickers along the top or bottom of the screen don't bother me much. What's more annoying is the notifications every time someone on my friend list logs on...

I'm back with more complaining about achievements. You know the absolute worst type of achievements? Local multiplayer ones because unless you have local friends who like said game you'll never obtain it and you know Nintendo of all companies would fill achievement lists with that kind of garbage. Why not focus on online rather than local?

I got nearly all of the multiplayer Little Big Planet areas including all of the 3 or 4 player ones by myself, except that one event in the Mexican Desert with the mine carts and bombs. Never had the coordination to pull it off. Most of the multiplayer events just involved one player standing in a spot or grabbing an object while another performed additional tasks. wrapping a rubber band on a button helps with grabbing. I had two PS3 controllers and two PS2 conntrollers via a USB adapter.

I think online multiplayer achievements are worse, because once the servers go down this no way to obtain them

@shaneoh: But with local ones there's no way to obtain them at all if you don't have others to play with (there's some exceptions but not many, see @StarDust4Ever's comment for example), at least online ones give you the option while the servers are online. I personally think though that any multiplayer achievements should be obtainable either way. So a perfect example would be the Halo achievements where you have to beat the campaign by means of co-op, you could invite a online friend on Xbox Live to play the campaign with you and you'll get the achievement but also you could have someone playing with you locally and you'd still get the achievement. The problem is though that Nintendo is fully against online co-op as proven by games like Super Mario 3D World.

Thank you. Even the guy who tried to "counter" me ended up proving my point. Just because it's "there" doesn't mean it's mandatory. There's really no debating that, guys. It's a PERSONAL problem if you consider any existing achievement systems (Xbox/PS/Steam) mandatory. Because they're not.

Simple as that. You can continue the discussion of whether or not you LIKE achievements from there, but you can't say you are being made to participate in them. Because... you're not lol

Edit: I read something like this a few years ago, and it certainly applies to a few of you: "They built a McDonald's in my hometown, and I got fat! I ended up stopping there almost every day!"

"Well...uhm...you don't need to stop there, you know?"

"Yea, but it's just right there on my way home from work! How can I not?"

...

I like how you try to present a point by not responding in any meaningful way. Please explain how this isn't a mandatory achievement, explain how I can avoid it and still use my application:

As for your McDonalds analogy:
This is a situation where the people that are buying the Big Mac want the lettuce taken out so we can eat the rest. The lettuce isn't providing anything meaningful, it's just there for those who want the crunch, however those of us who don't want the crunch can't take it out, because, for some reason, this particular McDonalds won't allow the lettuce to be taken out.