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there are some achievements i'll never collect on, specifically multiplayer.
2) I don't think 'fairness' ever enters the equation. Everyone has 'equal opportunity' to pursue achievements, because some are beyond a given individual's ability and/or the amount of the time they can commit, does not make them unfair.
3) I see nothing inherently wrong with this.
I do think there is good/bad achievement design, but I don't see anything overall that's wrong with there being very difficult achievements.
I have a big thing about difficulty, always have. From the time in the late 90s when I worked freelance for the Official UK PS mag right up to having involvement with certain other disabled gamers.
Let's try and tackle it in pieces.
In the first instance you have the general game's difficulty. there is no good argument for the daft and unempathetic "git gud" stuff that certain people spout about games like Dark Souls. Another easier options hurts nobody. It doesn't "cheapen" anyone's experience, because well, nobody can possibly know whether you took the easy route unless it actually says. So it CANNOT affect you.
Some people bemoan the fact that modern games are more "dumbed down" than older games as if that were some set in stone rule that should be adhered to. It's arse about face though, as the older games were largely done that way to stretch play times out. An artifical device to maintain longevity. Nowadays, gaming is MASSIVE and widespread. You aren't going to appeal to a wide audience if the wide audience can't or even can't be arsed to play them. So, any dev worth their salt who wants as many sales as poss gets this.
So, in a nutshell, as many difficulties spreads as possible is good for everyone.
As far as achievements go, I'm a little more the other way. I still agree there should absolutel be achievements everyone can feasibly attain. But there should be achievements that recognise harder work. Simply because achievements are NOT part of the game. They're a personal token, so it's not relevant to make them ALL accessible.
It's prudent to offer strong challenges for those who relish that sort of challenge. It's yet more options. Again, some completely ignore achievements, and they still can. But others, like myself, enjoy them. So why not apply the same thing, of giving everybody more options?
Of course the naysayers for this are people who suffer from a bit of irrational OCD like behaviour - they feel somehow they should be able to get ALL the achievements in every case. In some cases, sure, the achievements are set that way. But some aren't.
I suppose there's a simple way around that with puzzles, though, I wonder if maybe it would be too cheap... you can just look up the answer online. haha
This may feel like cheating but what if the game encouraged you to cheat within its own world? To do whatever you need to in order to win?
Obviously this gets a little more difficult with a better crafted puzzle that changes each time you play it and forces you to learn the mechanics rather than to memorize an exact value - but even that, someone could create a guide online that teaches you how to work through the motions.
I certainly agree with your points about difficulty.
Perhaps I just lean more towards the casual-end of the spectrum but I don't think so...
I've always thought of games where the main character was both easy to control and had very strong powers to be some of the most well-made games. Kirby is the main one that comes to mind for me, especially the older (but not oldest) entries in the series. The game gives you the option to use his powers in a modest way or to just get the strongest abilities that you can, allowing both experienced players and people completely new to video games to be able to beat the game.
There's nothing wrong with a weak main character but this is where a game might start to feel unfair, I think. The character needs to control at least well enough that you can dodge EVERY attack (you probably won't but that's not the point - you could) if they're going to be faced with opponents that are significantly stronger than them (creating a power imbalance) that they're SUPPOSED TO be able to defeat.
Although, what I'm -mainly- inquiring about in this topic is mainly in regards to puzzles and unless someone is going to give a character an AI that is going to HELP the player - the difficulty of that task is left ENTIRELY up to the player's own capabilities.
You could give a character infinite health but as long as either, they can't get hurt OR their loss of health doesn't matter because it doesn't interrupt the puzzle (even if fully depleted), then their stats & abilities have no bearing on the balance of the puzzle; the puzzle might have an effect on THEM but as far as completing the puzzle goes - in that scenario, only the player's own ability sets the difficulty.
Intriguing.
So, let me ask you this, now... what if that achievement - was the only achievement in the game?
Is it better for it to be more or less difficult at that point?
You can't really balance that out with something easy when it's THE only side-goal worth shining a spotlight on and encouraging the player to find.
Sure, there can be plenty of small things that the player can achieve along the way, but I'm not entirely certain those are deserving of an achievement.
In a day and age where every game has like... 200 achievements, I was really a fan of how Undertale handled it - no achievements. The point, in my opinion, there, was for you to explore and choose what small goals you'd take on at your own pace, with no pressure.
That's not that I think that's necessarily how it should be done but it seems to me as though an achievement should be something worth trying to figure out, overcome, and sometimes even - find, wherever it may hide. To some degree, it seems like adding too many achievements may make them overall seem unimportant - but then that raises another interesting question of, "how much is too much?" haha
Sometimes they act as milestones, but need they neccessarily?
This makes me wonder... if you have ONE thing that you want to shine the spotlight on as important, could it be improved from just the one achievement, to having a few more that you get as you meet some pre-requisite requirements? While this seems like a good idea, I think it may also depend on how well hidden you want your main achievement to be; do you WANT people to be told when they're getting warmer / closer OR to leave them in the dark about whether they're on the right track?
Personally, if I wanted it to feel more like a real life mystery, I think I'd opt to NOT tell them when they're so explicitely getting closer. After-all, those minor / smaller puzzles, that add up, that were fairly well-hidden, must be there for some reason, right?
Thanks so much for your detailed response, "crunchyfrog". That was a very good post to discuss & consider, in my opinion.
Not really. Payday 2 is one of the easiest 100% games. I did speedrunning on my second account and 100% is fairly doable in about 150 hours plus minus depending on how much you fail the perfect run for a heist.
@Topic
Nothing is "too hard". They are called achievements for a reason. Harder only means more rare than others. The only thing that can be discussed about achievements is their stupidity. For example 40 hours of playtime in Lucius where you can "100%" the rest of the achievements in about 10 hours. Or firing 1.000.000 bullets in POSTAL where you have about 10.000 after beating the rest of the achievements.
And the most stupid thing about achievements are those that require mulitplayer where the mulitplayer requires central servers or services like the Hitman: Absolution Contract-Achievements because they will one day be totally not doable at all which is a disgusting concept.
Everything else goes tho; if it has context, it's fine.
I largely agree with you, and I think a few of the points I made I likely didn't make clearly enough, as your points I do agree with anyway.
I love your point about achievements from the point of puzzles. That is a cracker of a situation - one I don't think I have an answer for, but you've certainly got me thinking!
The sad reality with puzzles or even any turn-based game is that you have very easy methods to cheat if you so wish. Looking up solutions and so on will always be a massive loophole (and I probably contributed to this in some way, as I used to be a freelance walkthrough/tips writer for the Official UK PS mag back in the day - I loved that job). But the way I look at it is that if you can't do anything about it, you might as well forget about it and just ignore it, because at least them it's a level playing field for everyone, you see?
I know that's a rather clumsy response, but what I mean is not that everyone will cheat, but rather all puzzle games have this issue, and it can't be solved so you might as well just ignore it and leave it in the hands of responsible customers to do what they wish.
As far as lesser number of achievements, or as you say just ONE achievement that's tough, well, that's a cracker of aquestion too. Honest answer - I don't know. On the one hand, it's as I said, I don't mind achievements reflecting difficulty, but on the other hand, it doesn't offer ANYTHING for users of less ability than that, so I don't think I'd agree with it that much. I suppose it all boils down to the context in the end.
I suppose in a perfect world, I'd like it to be rather like AbleGamers put out in their "manifesto" or guide for game devs. Difficulty should ideally be a slider, where you can hone in on what suits you. I personalyl am a big racing fan, and I find it Immensely satisfying to play games like Project Cars which allow you to set the strength and pushiness of your opponents. I wish other games in other genres could do this. Again, achievements could still be made to reflect this.
And in an ideal world, how I would create some achievements would be to offer the best of both worlds - by catering for those who want something for their challenge and those who aren't so able but will put the time in. For example, I would create achievements like "finish the game on hard difficulty, or finish 3 times on easy whilst killing x number of enemies".
I realise of course that this is very much an ideal world, as it would involve a bit more more work on the devs part.
But thank you again, this has got to be one of the most thought provoking discussions I've had on here in ages.
Nothing is too hard?
Demonstrable nonsense, I'm afraid. If I had to guess, I'd say you're a younger person, as you may not be aware of the myriad different types, ages, abilities and situations of people. That's not a knock at you - it's just how it is.
I'll remind you of something I've said already - 20% of ALL gamers have some sort of disability which affects their play. There's been considerable studies on this over the years from the University of Washington, to Universities here in Britain, AbleGamers, and many devs and publishers (including BAFTA, iirc). They all agree on that figure.
Now that's quite a chunk of gamers, isn't it? And here's the thing - those disabilities are wide and varied, so you can have very quick reacting people who trip up with colour blindness, or physically disabled (like myself) or deaf, epileptics, and so on. I personally know of one gamer who is physically disabled who was one of the top players in the world on Call of Duty, and has one arm. He can wipe the floor with most people, but if he is forced to use a two handed controller, instead of his own one handed one, that capability drops MASSIVELY.
For myself, I have spina bifida. It's milder than most people have it, as I've managed to survive into my fifties thus far. The problem is that I can have good days where I'm resolutely average compared to skills of everyone else. But if I have a bad day, and it's likely to last several days, my abilities drop right off. Can you imagine what it's like being x hours into a game and because you're having a bad day, you want to play to take your mind off things, but you can't because you can't change your difficulty half way through?
I'm giving you these few examples to show you there very much IS "too hard" as it definitely does exist. Maybe not for YOU, but on top of the 20% of us disabled, there's elderly, there's children, there's a whole host of different scenarios.
I hope you understand better now.
It seems like a lot of developers have set a very low standard and there's a lot of room for improvement from there. On this note, I've taken issues with games that have demeaning achievements too because just like... that's not an achievement - but on the other hand, there are ways of handling this that would fit within a game setting.
For example, "fire 1 million bullets" or "collect 1 million coins" is a stupid achievement on it's own - probably named something like... LOTS OF BULLETS or LOTS OF COINS - but if you spin that on its head and do something like "give 1 million diamonds to the princess" with the achievement title being "Please the Princess" suddenly it makes much more sense and is even a comedic spin on an otherwise stupid thing to have to do in order to get an achievement.
Technically, all achievements are possible - except maybe online multiplayer ones but they become very similar to "Impossible" achievements. Some games have had "Impossible" achievements that you've basically needed to hack the game in order to get.
They were still achievable and people got them - probably any player could have followed the same steps as I've seen guides for that sort of thing... but that still raises the question, "at what point would you consider an achievement not REALLY achievable any more?"
The Stanley Parable on the other hand has an "Impossible" achievement that isn't actually impossible but the game gives you no hint as to how to achieve it, the parameters to achieve it change over time, BUT the nature of defiance in the game's aesthetic suggest you should maybe just run the game with the developer console option and add the achievement if you really want it so bad.
Makes sense. I know some games have "Impossible" achievements that usually leave no clue as to how to get them and might even require essentially hacking the game in order to get. Some people are determined enough that they STILL get those achievements.
I'm curious as to what your idea of too much of a hassle is, though?
While what is a hassle may vary between genres, I'm guessing that, in-general, too much of a hassle may involve things like... trade sequences that make you run 30 laps around the world.
Okay, that makes sense. I wonder what you consider essential, though, because as a significant puzzle, we may be talking about a requirement for 100% but then a lot of people don't care about 100% so long as they can still beat the game.
Would you consider -that- to be essential if it was optional?
If we remove the aspect of time and give the player infinite time to complete a challenge, I would argue that in theory (perhaps even in practice) this becomes a fairly true statement - however... when the player has to react to situations in real time or within a time limit, suddenly there is a point that might be too hard.
In theory they should be able to just practice and practice until they get better ("git gud") but not only is that questionable design... but in-practice it might not actually be true.
If given infinite time to make decisions, I can get behind the concept of nothing being too hard, though. I can see how someone would quickly come to this conclusion too when asked about puzzles as mooost puzzles... (forget about that Tetris thing for a second) do not leave you with limited amounts of time to react and make decisions.
From a developer stand-point, this is an ESSENTIAL thing to address as it does nothing to change the balancing of the gameplay but does make the game more accessible - however, it's also a bit of a nightmare to address, lol.
In theory it's not actually that hard - I could easily rattle off some color theory basics as to why this is an easy fix (if you only need to fix it once) and shouldn't be too hard to implement ...but making sure that it's never a problem in the entire design of a game, on the other hand... that's a problem.
Fun story, a family member gave me a Chinese knock-off of the NES Mini (I guess they just couldn't tell the difference)... it was in black and white. Dr. Mario... is VERY HARD in black and white. The reason is because with the hues AND saturation removed, 2 of the pill colors are the the same brightness or value.
I wish the other controller hadn't been defective because that would have been a hilarious gag item to take to friend's houses and say, "Hey, want to play a 2 player Dr. Mario battle?" and then they agree but when they play its in black and white and 2 of the pill colors look exactly the same as each other. hahahaha...
I played through about 5 of the single player levels that way and it really changes how you think about playing the game and the strategies that you use. I must have tried 30 times just to complete level 03.
...It was a lot of fun as a self-imposed challenge but there's no way I could have beaten the entire game that way and that kind of experience really shows you how bad a game can get for someone who is color blind if you're not mindful of a... difficult to manage but very easy to implement design element of simply making sure that the brightness value of each of the colors in the game is noticeably different.
Essential would be for me that it's necessary to move forward with the plot or if it blocks of a significant part of the game, so to speak. If it isn't essential, then I'd attempt it, but would have no issue putting it aside. In the latter case it's just as relevant to me as collector missions, I have no enjoyment in such tedious stuff.
And yes, even if the best armor/weapon in the game is locked behind such a mechanic, chances are I still pass it up. If the road to get something is too tedious, I simply don't do it.
I play games for enjoyment, not for frustration.
For me unachievable would be when it can no longer be achieved via methods within the game. I can give a few examples of this;
Games that have achievements such as "bought the game in early access"...this is no longer achievable when the game leaves early access. I don't like these types of achievements in general, but that's another matter. And ya, there are several games with this exact achievement or something similar to it.
Broken achievements, whether it be one's that never worked since launch, were broken in an update, or rendered obselete in an update. The latter happens in games when a map is removed that had an achievement tied to it as an example. Some developer's address this, some don't.
Achievements that are deliberately made to never be achieved by design. I've only encountered this a couple time's, where the developer made achievements that could not be unlocked because they thought it was funny. It's effectively just an achievement without any trigger tied to it, so there's no way to unlock it in game.
These all exist, but they're not based on difficulty in any way. I haven't encountered an achievement that was 'so hard' no one at all could do it. Even if it's only .01% of the players, that's still achievable so I'm ok with that. I don't believe that a game has to be able to be 100%'d by every player with a desire to do so. All that matters to me is that the opportunity is there, even if that opportunity is only realistic in a vacuum (having infinite time etc). There are many achievements I'll never be able to get, because I can't dedicate the necessary time or don't have the patience to 'get good' as it were (the supermeat boy games of the world for example), but I'm ok with that.
I should also probably add in, when I say I'm ok with it, I mean in the general sense that I don't have an issue with an achievement being very difficult. Whether I think it's good or bad achievement design would depend on the nature of the achievement and game.
Mid 20s but I am not sure why this is anywhere important at all. I would bet I forgot more games than you will ever play in your entire life. No bragging, just simple fact based on my person that dumps most of his freetime into nothing else but electronics and all ahead goes videogames... I've seen a lot from old classics and arcade machines way through to the current VR department.
And pointing out disabilities or what ever has nothing to do with this topic. You, as a developer, do not design your game or achievements based on the minor part of the fraction of the gaming industry (which said groups of person would be) that potientially cannot do some things in your game. You design them based on the vast majority of gamers. Might be unfair I know but that does not make the achievement itself any harder it only makes the satisfaction for YOURSELF bigger. The first thing I think about when I see a rare achievement on someones profile is "Wow... I am impressed" and not "Hmmmm... well what kind of disabilities does this guy have?". This is not a thing of ignorance but just a fact how peoples mind are.
You actually showed nothing at all. You showed that there is a chunk of gamers that are POTENTIALLY uncapable of doing certain stuff. Well guess what... I know that...
But thats not the topic. I feel sorry for you really. No one deserves being disabled. Yet still if you base difficulty on potentials you could declare literally ANYTHING as undoable because there are people out there that used to play video games and then fell into a coma or suffer Locked-In Syndrome.
If I lose both of my arms today there would still be some games that I could play like Sing! or some dance game but I will never ever be able to play Half-Life: Alyx again. But I would never declare HL:A Achievements as "too hard"
And if you declare achievements being "too hard" based on given disadvantages from birth you can also declare them as being "too easy" based on a minor part that were born with a talent for a certain game. Thats basically the same logic... and as well as your theory that does not work at all here