Topic: Achievements

New to the site so this has probably been discussed already but with the launch of the online service come and gone is it pretty much a done deal that they aren’t happening? I know there was an indie dev talking about it a year ago but there haven’t been any rumors since. Thoughts?

Some games may have in-game achievements. But do we really need a way to measure our epeen against everyone else's epeen?

@tsanders1099 Seemed to me that if that was going to be be added, it would have been added long before now. Like @FaeKnight said, many games have their own systems for them however. I used to enjoy that little beep on Xbox 360 back in the day with the "Achievement Unlocked" pop up. But I have also read about a lot of negativity associated with achievements. From what I gather there's a person who hates achievements for everyone who likes them. So perhaps it's best to not have them, to avoid yet another thing for people to argue about and bully each other over.

If the choice boiled down to yes or no, I'd say no. However being able to completely disable and hide (not just hide the popup) them, would give people the best of both worlds. But here is the old thread.

Oh thanks for the old thread. For me it’s never been about comparing them to other peoples. The thing I’ve always loved about Nintendo games is that they are always so replayable. I’ve always thought if any games would be fun to have an achievement list for its them. Most people complain about the boring and uninspired lists that come on games but I think Nintendo would come up with some really creative stuff for people to do. Achievements have always given me two things, giving me reasons to play a game for longer than I normally would and they also serve as a scrapbook of the games I’ve played. It’s fun to flip through every now and then to see how much I did in a given game.

I'm a fan of achievements and must admit I buy many multiplatform games on Xbox consoles (and not Nintendo) because of them. To me it's more important than performance, so when I but for Xbox and not Nintendo is for achievements, not graphics. But I don't obsess with them, because I know I'll just won't be able to 100% games. There are too difficult achievements for me, or totally random that wouldn't occur to me if I didn't search information. But I like to get as many as possible. And share them for a good friendly rivalry.

Nintendo has been known for adopting trends late, at least for some generations now, but this one I expected to see on the Switch. Wouldn't harm.

Don't get me wrong. I can be an achievement hound myself. But the achievements themselves are often things like "kill X number of things, then Y number of things, then Z number of things, then XYZ number of things". Or they are "find 15%, 30%, 45%, 60%, 75%, 90%, and 100% of these difficult to track down in-game collectables". The Online Multiplayer Only ones can be the most egregious since often the expect you to do nothing but play online multiplayer obsessively for months. And the ones that only unlock on a specific day at a specific time are even more annoying still. I have one game with an achievement for starting up the game after three months of not playing it. Uhm, what?!

They are an arbitrary 'completion' checklist that often require you to play the game in sub optimal ways. Take an achievement in Borderlands 1 called "Not an Italian plumber". To get this achievement you have to kill an enemy by jumping on them. Considering you do barely any damage when you jump on an enemy, why on earth would you ever try doing this if you didn't know about the achievement?

Then there are the bad games that get good sales simply because they have a set of stupidly easy to get achievements for an easy 1000 achievement points. Bad games shouldn't be encouraged.

I can see the benefits of system-level achievement integration but, as FaeKnight said, it can lead to some developers making arbitrary achievements that don't add anything to the game, just for the sake of it. If a dev actually wants achievements in their game, they should be willing to add an in-game achievement system. That way it can be integrated into the game in a way that makes sense for that game's setting and style, and maybe offer in-game rewards (like Nintendo has done recently with ARMS and Super Mario Odyssey).

I understand how achievements/trophies add a little extra to a gamer's gaming experience, but personally I think Nintendo can continue to ignore adding them to their ecosystem. I used to care about them back in the 360/PS3 era. But then I would try to 100% below-average games and I'd feel scummy for doing so, as though I could have spent my time better elsewhere. It's easier to play simply for the pleasure of playing in the absence of a meaningless achievement/trophy chase.

Not to mention achievements try to guilt you into playing modes you don't want to play or doing things you don't want to do. I can be quite the completionist when I feel like it. I've done FF10 play-through where I maxed out everyone's sphere grid just for the sake of doing it. I play the card game in FF8 because I enjoy playing the card game. I don't need an achievement to encourage me to play it obsessively. But at the same time I don't need Breath of the Wild guilt tripping me into hunting down every last one of the 900 korak seeds. And taunting me with half the gamer score being locked behind multiplayer vs will just make me feel bad about not playing that mode, even though I don't like the extremely toxic in-game communities such modes tend to develop. Then taunting me with impossible to get achievements because I'm not, and likely never will be, good enough at a racing game multiplayer shooter to be the #1 ranked person in the world on the leader board? I can do without that.

After getting away from achievement hunting once I scored over 180k, I stopped caring. I never want to see Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader or Uno for the rest of my life. It was a neat idea, but many games destroyed it.

I too was a big trophy hunter in the PS3 days but much less so on the ps4. If it's a game I really enjoy (GOW, Spiderman, Horizon etc) I will definitely go fit the platinum as long as it's reasonable but definitely won't play a game just for the trophies as I did in the past. Great thing about trophies now though is you can actually earn psn credit for them. Takes a grind but at least they now offer some tangible real value. If nintendo did it that way would be pleased!

Quoted for truth!

One of the refreshing things about gaming on switch is the complete absence of achievements.

It got to the point with my Xbox where I stopped enjoying my games as much because of the way achievements made me feel and the way they changed the way I game.

No thanks. Pretentious superfluous nonsense. If you ask me, anyone that needs to be spoon fed how to play 'outside the box' in a video game should go back to watching YouTube videos.

I used to be down with the ideas of achievements on Switch but now I think offering a modest amount of gold coins for completing say three 'big' achievements in first party titles would be a better idea. For example Mario Odyssey 25 coins for finishing the story, 25 for reaching 500 moons 50 for finishing all hint arts. Its not a crazy amount that will bankrupt Nintendo and nobody is going to force there way through a game they don't like for 100 gold coins but it's a little reward for giving the game a chunk of your time.

I also thought Arms' use of badges/coins/art was pretty decent.

Did anyone flag this for most people lose of money on Switch and Switch game achievements?

I don’t even know what that means

They've been an industry standard for over 10 years, I think it's high time Nintendo finally adopted them.

Except, why does Nintendo 'need' to adopt achievements? They don't add anything to the game after all.

@FaeKnight I'm not saying they do for me but for some they do. Adding them doesn't do any harm to those who don't want them as they can simply ignore them.