Achievements should be required for games

[Thomas]

There are plenty of games on steam that simply don't have achievements. Even plenty of triple A games exclude achievements from their current/old games simply because there's no requirement to.

We don't see this issue on xbox/playstation because they require every game to have achievements to even be put on the platform.

Achievements might seem unimportant to some but, to me and many others, 100 percenting a game gives us an actual reason to fully finish games. This has an added bonus not only to steam users but to Steam as a platform, as this drastically increases playtime on select games.

In short, achievements increase Steam playtime metrics by giving people an incentive to fully complete games, add an incentive for people to go back and buy older games, and really make games that much more enjoyable for everybody on the platform. Make achievements a requirement for games to be on steam!

[crunchyfrog]

@Supafly - excellent point.

You can't polish a turd after all.

And as you rightly say, if a game is half-hearted or a bit ♥♥♥♥, then you can guarantee they aren't going to add any meaningful achievements anyway.

[Supafly]

crunchyfrog の投稿を引用：

@Supafly - excellent point.

You can't polish a turd after all.

And as you rightly say, if a game is half-hearted or a bit ♥♥♥♥, then you can guarantee they aren't going to add any meaningful achievements anyway.

Yup and lots of
kill x amount of enemies with Weapon A
kill x amount of enemies with Weapon B
kill x amount of enemies with Weapon C
kill x amount of enemies with Weapon D

and so on....... All of which should be easy as different weapons for diff purposes and what not

Then all the grind achievments like
Walk 5 miles
Walk 50 miles
Walk 500 miles
Walk 5000 miles

and so on.............just to force users to continue playing. I remember to 100% a Final Fantasy game on PS3 I had to ride a mount for x distance in a specific area. One final but tedious achievement and getting it wasn't difficult. I positioned the character in the centre of a big open area and used an elastic band to keep the thumbstick angled to move the character in a circle doing donuts and went shopping. Beat the game once and no intention of playing it again. If it had to be replayed again for an achievement I'd have saved myself the electricity and prep work for the one I just mentioned and not 100% it.

Ok, that's enough forum for me this morning. Forbidden West is calling

[AROCK!!!]

Supafly の投稿を引用：

xM4L0k41x の投稿を引用：

i have been saying this forrrrevvvvvver achievements add a replay aspect that dlc or the lack there of fail to do spending hours trying to get achievements has added hours of game-play for me on many titles on console and PlayStation, and when a steam game that has achievements on Xbox or PlayStation but doesn't have them on steam like for example fallout 3......... friggin fallout 3 has achievements on gfw but not steam...... COME ON!!! I'm gonna buy it on the other platform that has the achievements just because. so Xbox and Sony have it right achievements make me want to play more often ! steam hop on the band wagon and make that money ! pleasssseeee!

To a degree yes but if the game is ****, users opinion obviously, adding achievements does not = replay value. If a game is good sure but **** to mediocre not so much. Now if a game is Great people may reply a game anyway.

I Plat'd Horizon Zero Dawn + got all DLC trophies and Still played the game through again after having 100% of the Trophies. Did so in part because I'd already Plat'd the game before the DLC so I decided to do it again but do the DLC during the game not after finishing the main story. Over a year later I replayed in again before Forbidden West released. So much Replay value with Trophies/Achievements having nothing to do with it.

Just slapping achievements to a game is often just that. Slapping them on. Many are not actually an accomplishment. Reached level 2, level 5, Finished the Intro, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Purchased your first x, beat the game.
All pretty basic if you're actually playing the game. If anything those sorts of achievements highlight how many people don't even finish the game which if users bothered researching achievements they could see that x% of players haven't beat the game which implies it's not that good. In which case adding of achievements would be a negative thing in the eyes of a dev and gamers clearly couldn't give a **** about the achievements if they can't be **** to even complete the game

Well said.


Most of the games I have replayed time and time again (and still do) are older ones from before the days of achievements.

I play them because they are good games, such as the first 3 Ghost Recons, First few Rainbow Six, Delta Force, Half-life, Opfor and blue shift, Quake, Cysis--especially Warehead, Unreal, FEAR, STALKER series, C&C, TD, RA, TS, TW, KR and so on.

I even have an old Windows 98/XP dual boot machine to run games that won't run on modern systems


When it comes to those I do replay often that are modern most are remakes and remasters.

One exception is the Modern Warfare series (SP) campaigns.
Imo they are very thought out, top quality voice acting, well built, etc.

The Bog, Warpig and Whisky Hotel on Veteran are brutal and unforgiving, and exhilarating.

I played over 2000 hours of Killing Floor, but only because I enjoyed it with friends.
With random I could do a game or two before I had enough, and solo I could not get past wave 5 before I was bored sick

[mark]

that's true that archievement will let us feel sth. but could it related to steam level first...

[Supafly]

markpeng の投稿を引用：

that's true that archievement will let us feel sth. but could it related to steam level first...

No, If achievements got linked to Steam level the number of users that use SAM would increase dramatically just to have a higher Steam level and all the bonuses that comes from being higher level.

[cinedine]

Supafly の投稿を引用：

markpeng の投稿を引用：

that's true that archievement will let us feel sth. but could it related to steam level first...

No, If achievements got linked to Steam level the number of users that use SAM would increase dramatically just to have a higher Steam level and all the bonuses that comes from being higher level.

They could just introduce a seperate achievement level without tieing it to anything. So just as pointless as the PSN level, which people like for some reason.
People might still cheat to show off, but those who do, will do, no matter how meaningless.

[Supafly]

cinedine の投稿を引用：

Supafly の投稿を引用：

No, If achievements got linked to Steam level the number of users that use SAM would increase dramatically just to have a higher Steam level and all the bonuses that comes from being higher level.

They could just introduce a seperate achievement level without tieing it to anything. So just as pointless as the PSN level, which people like for some reason.
People might still cheat to show off, but those who do, will do, no matter how meaningless.

That'd be fine. Just not to the main Steam level due to SAM as mentioned.

EDIT: PSN and Steam Achievements only mean anything to me. Don't care about anyone elses and it's only for games that I enjoyed playing had a challenge to 100% that wasn't just time consuming grinds

[STARLEE]

I'm coming from Zup! What did I miss?

[crunchyfrog]

markpeng の投稿を引用：

that's true that archievement will let us feel sth. but could it related to steam level first...

No, the problem you need to remember with ANY suggestion on steam is the first cardinal rule - can it be easily exploited?

This would easily.

The reason why Valve introduced the steam level system (at least in part) was a measure of keeping accounts with no purchases free from spamming and scamming. So haveing the point that you need to spend so much and having to earn an increase in level to increase your friends list and so on, was a great way to mitigate this.

If you emplyed what you suggest then that completely nukllfies any of that and makes scammers and spammers easy to do thier stuff again.

So no, never going to happen.

[JPMcMillen]

ÁROCK!!! の投稿を引用：

Do you actually think that achievements like, completed mission X, or, built 10 of X, or any of the other pointless 'filler' is providing invaluable data to the studio/developer and in turn helping them to create better games?

Achievements that indicate either beating successive levels or completing parts of the main story are useful for the developers. Because if they notice a huge drop in completion for a particular level, they can then try to find out why more players aren't completing it. It could be things like an unintended spike in difficulty or an easily missable 'something' that may be hindering players completion of that part. Whatever it is, they developers can give that part another look and patch the issue that is causing the completion drop off.

However, this doesn't mean that developers should be forced to add achievements to their games. These days it's possible for developers to get direct feedback from players and find out if there are issues with certain parts of their game.

[Start_Running]

JPMcMillen の投稿を引用：

ÁROCK!!! の投稿を引用：

Do you actually think that achievements like, completed mission X, or, built 10 of X, or any of the other pointless 'filler' is providing invaluable data to the studio/developer and in turn helping them to create better games?

Achievements that indicate either beating successive levels or completing parts of the main story are useful for the developers. Because if they notice a huge drop in completion for a particular level, they can then try to find out why more players aren't completing it. It could be things like an unintended spike in difficulty or an easily missable 'something' that may be hindering players completion of that part. Whatever it is, they developers can give that part another look and patch the issue that is causing the completion drop off.

However, this doesn't mean that developers should be forced to add achievements to their games. These days it's possible for developers to get direct feedback from players and find out if there are issues with certain parts of their game.

It also helps them gauge which aspects of the game people are engaguing with. Crafting related achievements would tell them how many and how deeply people engaged with a game's crafting mechanics. If they see low achievement scores across that, then they know they did something wrong.

Same with exploration, side quests, combat, etc.
Granted these are only as useful as the devs make them. If they are simple thoughtless random busy work becaus ethe devs got told to put in achievments because that's what the youngsters like.. then they're not going to be particularly meaningful. However. if there is careful though and the achievements are done in such a way as to indicate how and what the players are actually doing in the game...

If they notice that a particular mechanic isn't being used then they may look at improving the tutorial for it, introduction, balancing, or just removing it.

[cinedine]

JPMcMillen の投稿を引用：

Achievements that indicate either beating successive levels or completing parts of the main story are useful for the developers.

There are better telemetry options available and achievements always have the possibility to be earned just because they are there. Also the gap between e.g. crafting one item in the tutorial and crifting 1000 items during the game play is too much to draw any conclusions from.

If you look at achievements most follow a simple formula:
- 1/3 progression
- 1/3 collectables, exploration or unlocks
- 1/3 challenges or weird stuff

[JPMcMillen]

cinedine の投稿を引用：

JPMcMillen の投稿を引用：

Achievements that indicate either beating successive levels or completing parts of the main story are useful for the developers.

There are better telemetry options available and achievements always have the possibility to be earned just because they are there. Also the gap between e.g. crafting one item in the tutorial and crifting 1000 items during the game play is too much to draw any conclusions from.

If you look at achievements most follow a simple formula:
- 1/3 progression
- 1/3 collectables, exploration or unlocks
- 1/3 challenges or weird stuff

But the numbers are often way off of normal game play. Your example of 'crafting 1000 items' would be fine if the vast majority of players were going to craft around that many items while completing the game. But if most players are only going to craft 200-300 items to finish the game, then that achievement is nothing but a grind fest which developers should not be doing.

Years ago the old MMO City of Heroes added Badges to the game, which were pretty much character specific achievements. After a while the developers began to examine some of the badges to see what players were doing to achieve them. They eventually determined that some of them, primarily 'defeat X number of Y' badges, had players farming for extremely long periods of time to get them instead of earning them through normal game play. Those badges were then altered to allow players to earn them more easily through normal game play and not from farming specific enemies. It's a shame that more devs don't do the same and stop including excessive grind filled achievement requirements.

But most of all that other stuff (collectables, exploration, unlocks, challenges, etc...) is nothing but excess padding that rarely adds anything to the actual game itself, other than additional playtime. It just turns the game world into one giant golf course where players run around going from flag to flag trying to collect whatever is there, instead of actually playing the game itself. And if the game is really fun to play, players will explore around just for the sake of it don't really need a special reward beyond any regular loot/xp they might collect for treasure/opponents in those areas.

[Start_Running]

JPMcMillen の投稿を引用：

cinedine の投稿を引用：

There are better telemetry options available and achievements always have the possibility to be earned just because they are there. Also the gap between e.g. crafting one item in the tutorial and crifting 1000 items during the game play is too much to draw any conclusions from.

If you look at achievements most follow a simple formula:
- 1/3 progression
- 1/3 collectables, exploration or unlocks
- 1/3 challenges or weird stuff

But the numbers are often way off of normal game play. Your example of 'crafting 1000 items' would be fine if the vast majority of players were going to craft around that many items while completing the game. But if most players are only going to craft 200-300 items to finish the game, then that achievement is nothing but a grind fest which developers should not be doing.

Or.. tghey could see the low percentage of people completing that cheevo as a hint that they need to create more incentives for crafting. Make it more rewarding, or interesting Or if they're lazy jjust leave it as a grinder. I'm reminded of the 'Fire 1,000,000 bullets' cheevo in one of the Borderlands game. Literally just a grinder and not a particularly interesting one. Just tape down a button and go to bed.

[Tito Shivan]

JPMcMillen の投稿を引用：

Years ago the old MMO City of Heroes added Badges to the game, which were pretty much character specific achievements. After a while the developers began to examine some of the badges to see what players were doing to achieve them. They eventually determined that some of them, primarily 'defeat X number of Y' badges, had players farming for extremely long periods of time to get them instead of earning them through normal game play.

To be honest, I'm kind of surprised at the devs being surprised at people farming at an MMO. It's like the bread and butter of the genre.

cinedine の投稿を引用：

There are better telemetry options available

If a dev wants to gauge user experience, basic telemetry is going to work seven ways to sunday better than any achievement system. Just one quick example I can think about is achievements biasing the user behavior by offering a goal, while telemetry can gather the same data without changing the user behaviour.