Topic: Achievements?

If I wanna show my achievements and trophies, I take a screenshot and show it to my friends. Yup, Miiverse was the best achievements system for me.

In Steam, PS4 and XBox its just an overarching system corrupting all games with needless stuff (even pulling in games that don't make sense in that system).

Other than that the "gamer score" is a pointless number: the highscores are not held by the best gamers but by the people with the most money: people that buy every piece of shovelware in the bargain bin to rack up some "gamer score" points. Essentially it's pay-to-win crap.

It's better for each game to have its own achievement system when it makes sense and when it's becoming a better game because of it. The game developers and designers will have more freedom without it as they don't have to use it. If they want, they can continue making their own in-game achievement systems.

Also it's much nicer to have design variety in those "achievement collection" screens instead of having just one generic system for all. Sweeping all under the same carpet, like globalization, is cancer. It's damaging to the freedom and power of smaller groups.

Finally, I can't think of many things that are worse during gameplay than those achievement pop-up messages. They're almost like unwanted ads.

Who in their right mind would want to damage their beautiful HD cutscenes with pop up messages? And how many games have you played on PS and Xbox where the achievement pop-ups obscured not just cutscenes, but vital UI information or important in-game screentext?

I think the idea is horrible and even though I might be one of the highest scoring guys in such a system, if it is like on PS and Xbox I will shut it off.

@SKTTR

I don't want to turn them off.
I just want something better than what is on platforms like Playstation, Xbox, and Steam.

I'd prefer achieve-mints. You get a mint every time you do something impressive or notable in a game.

I think I'll just turn them off. In game achievement systems that unlock new stuff, like Bayonetta or Smash are the best systems for me since it actually feels relevant.
Having trophies just for the sake of it, or for bragging rights feels kind of useless for me.

Please, just watch this video and stop arguing about the value of achievements, it'll give a better understanding of why people like them and everything:

@Blaze1021
Nope

I feel like Nintendo is a unique position to make achievements even better than what Xbox and Playstation offer because of My Nintendo. If achievements translated into coins that you could spend on My Nintendo rewards, that would be a great way to get some use out of them instead of having a pretty much meaningless score. Of course they would still need rewards actually worth spending on, but yeah.

If accomplishments gave us coins, I would forgive My Nintendo for its awful rewards

@shaneoh What do you mean "nope", don't get turned off because it's game theory, he makes great points and explanations about this topic.

Funny thing because 80% games on switch are ports from different consoles which already have achievements implemented

@Blaze1021
Nope I'm not watching the video because you've explicitly signed up to try and get us to watch the video. Nope because I'm sure it's filled with the same arguments that have already been brought up in this thread which have failed to convince me otherwise. Nope because reasons against achievements that have already been listed.

I owned a 360 once and didnt like the achievement system in general - I remember playing the orange box and one achievement wanted you to carry garden gnome throughout the whole episode 2 - wow ! I think developers create some stupid achievements just to see how many stupid people actually do this poop.

IMO an achievement system should be better designed and provide some serious rewards and not just a badge.
Hopefully Nintendo wont jump on that wagon.
_{watch the language, please...-Joey}

I get the feeling that, in the Lichtspeer AMA, one of the developer's saying achievements were coming might have been a publicity stunt.

Probably. I'd rather Nintendo finish the Switch and it's whole plan before they start trying to do something else as big as system wide achievements. That can wait, I'd rather things like video capturing and the eshop be fixed.

I'm honestly surprised there's any negative feedback concerning Achievements, not because they're "SO GREAT!" or anything. I just thing anything like this that can be added should be. The Switch is already a great success, and I want that to continue, and if this helps I'm all for it. Besides, someday in the distant future I will be out of games to play (due to funds before lack of choices at this rate) and maybe I'll wanna "100%" a game. More options, in gaming, is rarely a bad thing.

Here's the full passage from the AMA:

The way it's worded makes me wonder whether they were referring to Leaderboard/Ranking functionality rather than an Achievement system? ..particularly as they were responding to a question about online rankings specifically

Either way, I do imagine that the full paid online subscription service will be considerably more feature-rich than what the Switch has currently - but we should be careful not to let speculation turn in to expectation...

@shaneoh
1. So what does it matter that I just made my account? I saw a thread and thought I might be helpful

2. You don't know that until you watch the video

3. Reasons against achievements? Dude I'm all for achievements, and the video is meant for explaining why people like achievements, and I saw some people confused on why people obsess over them, so I posted it.

4. You seriously can't take a couple of minutes to watch some video? Clearly you have enough time to argue on this post so surely you have time to take a glance at a video.

@Blaze1021
1. It's not helpful telling us to stop arguing over the "value" of achievements and sticking a video up.

2. I'm sure you can summarise the points for us.

3. Reasons against which have already been stated by myself and others.

4. The video is 10 minutes long, enough of a glance?

This is quite a long thread now, but am I missing something? There's no reason the developers can't run their own leaderboards - I believe ACA Hamster does it for all of the Neo Geo games. As for achievements, I've spent a good part of the last week clearing a good chunk of achievements in the Shovel Knight collection.

So why does everyone look to Nintendo? Developers can, and are, putting leaderboards and achievements into Switch games. Up to them - nobody is stopping them.