Trophy / Achievement thread

I couldn't resist and let out some pent up hate into the world. However I did so in a wrong thread, so I decided to make a new thread to shoulder my never ending hatred. Damn I feel emo right now.

Failed attempts at being funny aside. I would like to know your opinions on the following matter.

Sentiel wrote:Rep system huh? Sounds like a chore. People are gonna abuse it for sure.

PS3 guys tend to bash each other for their level and amount of Trophies. Both seem silly to me.
To be honest, I'm still waiting for the day when I will be able to delete all my Trophies and completely disable them. All the Trophy/Achievment systems and ranking systems as well, I hate them to the marrow of my bones. Never asked for them, never wanted them, hate them and want them removed.

Just few days a go a person in my Friend List messaged me, congratulating me to getting Platinum in Dragon's Dogma. I know he meant well, but it just pissed me off.

Sony said Trophies will be optional when they started with them. Well they're not. Every game delays it's startup with Trophy instalation, Trophies usually contain story related spoilers, that annoying sound they make when you get one totally kills the atmosphere in some cases (reminds me that it's just a game), you can't view your and others profiles without Trophy sync, which takes up to five minutes in my case and if you cancel it, you're a lot likely to get stuck in endless menu loading. And in games like Split/Second Trophies affect your game, In this particular game, you got a sticker on your car for every Trohpy. I hate car stickers, but I can't remove them. I love this racing game, like no other, but stopped playing it because my car looked stupid. No way to turn these annoyances off. The worst thing for me is the fact that I have 1000+ Trophies and level 15, so most people think I'm a Trophy collector, or a Trophy wh*re, as I'm sometimes called.
#1 reason for broken controller.

So I'm a lot skeptical when Sony says that all this social horses**t that PS4 is supposed to have will be "optional". If I find out it's not, I'm through with them both and go buy a freaking Nintendo, or stop playing games completely. Wouldn't know what to do with my life then. Reading books could be an interesting alternative...

I've made a post like this on the official PS forums soon after Trophies were introduced. It created a big flame war. I hope it will not happen here again. On the other hand, this community is full of smart and kind people, so I think it won't happen.

You hit the nail on the head. The only thing I'd personally modify about that is to mention that I don't mind trophies for the 100% optional, very tedious and often ridiculous (hidden) trophies, those that you get by driving a car off the back of a plane into the ocean while your dog is strapped to the top and you eject as the car hits the water(I don't think that's a real trophy...). You shouldn't be given a trophy just because you progress in a game, let alone when the game is easy enough for a 5 year old to progress through it.

I got 3 demon's souls platinums, i rule all.
Totally agree though, i finish a game and don't give 2 craps about the plats. A mate of mine used rent games with easy plats just to get the platinums. There was a site with a list of the top easy platinums, i remember the same mate buying a 3 year old madden nfl and other old games 2nd hand for the plats.

Its an addictive system to say the least,

I don't give a **** about Trophies or People who care about Trophies .

However, i think that Trophies could Motivate you to do certain Challenges like beating the Game without dying once and others you may not come up with yourself .

All in all i don't mind them

I like the trophy system, and have fun trying to plat all of my games.
That being said I understand the frustration of easy-to-platinum games (retarded, but quickly found out and thought of as such) and spoilers in the trophy name (could easily be fixed by making all trophies hidden until you get them, some games already do this).
I also understand where your coming from regarding the w*nkers out there who like to judge you as a gamer based on your trophy completion, but at the same time something that keeps me loving a game after I've finished the main story is competing with my friends (IRL) for trophies--for instance when we both got Dark Souls we made a platinum bet, and I won $50 bucks.

Oh and if you're bothered by the trophy pop sound you can turn the notification off. Just saying.

All in all, no they're not implemented perfectly, but I'd be sad to see them banished to the abyss.

I would welcome a simple option, that would disable them. I downloaded a save file for Catherine, so I can enjoy the story and skip those annoying puzzles. Since the save wasn't mine I couldn't earn any Trophies. When I did something that should give me a Trophy the notification blinked five times saying "You did not earn a trophy". Damn that was such a nice feeling.
Something like that. But also turn the notification off. If I would go to an extreme, I would welcome a option to either make my profile private, or to disable Trophies and my level showing up on my profile instead.

Yes, I can turn notifications off, however Sony is stupid and I can't choose which I want to turn off and which to keep. I have almost full Friend List, so the constant updates on who's offline and online are annoying, but if I turn those and Trophy notifications off, I also won't see if I received a message, or a chat invite. Chat will be completely invisible as well. I care about messages that people send me, even hatemail. I don't wanna find a five hour old message asking for help. I would feel terrible.

I'm playing games since I was five. I spent my whole life playing video games. It's the only thing I like and only thing I care about. I'm a very friendly, although very moody guy, but I never had many friends irl, because I simply care about games more. Or used to at least. The older I am, the worse the games are. It's not that my standards are getting higher. If they would, I couldn't play my old MGS, or FF and still love them. Games simply started to suck. Well most of them. There are exceptions, like Dark Souls and more.

The point is, that if I ever wanted to play a multiplayer game, I had to invite my friends to my place, or go to theirs. Yes, it grew boring soon, especially since I was winning most of the time, but it was hilarious, it was fun and all in good spirits.
When I got the internet, I met a lot of nice guys as well, but most I met were elitist assholes. Just play CoD to see the worst gamer community has to offer. You meet guys like that everywhere, it's just that CoD has the most of them on it's shoulders. If I met a guy like that on a LAN party, I would simply go and punch him. Since you can't do that online (not yet at least ) people act like assholes more than one could deem possible.

While Trophy / Achievement and ranking systems are popular, they all encourage elitism even further and thus encourage this scum, we all have to deal with sooner, or later.

Now Sony comes up with their marvelous idea to allow people to watch how you play games, or even take control of your game over the net. Enabling chats with strangers while you play, share button, so you can post your screenshots on your favourite social media. All of it is unbelievable horseshit to me, that has nothing to do with video games.
I am aware how huge mass popularity things like Twitter and Facebook have, even though I rarely use them and have most of my friends there blocked, so I don't have to read their crap, but I don't want that stuff in my games. Worst of all a freaking insta share button right on the controller.

I mean. This is a video game console I'm talking about, not a friggin' iPad / iPhone / iDon't know, it doesn't need any of this. It needs good games, which is exactly what we do NOT get. We get less and less games each year and most of them are cheap butt sequels. If it's not a sequel it's a rip ff from another game, made in attempt to steal some of it's glory. Look at Xbox ONE. Putting the TV stuff and speculations aside, what was the gaming spectacle of the show? A fridging CoD combined with Kinect Animals. Another CoD?! DO we really need more? It's all the same thing. Then you got Battlefield, Medal of Honor and more. All of those is one and the same game with slight and minor differences. The only white hawk amongs these gooses was Halo, but they *** it up as well with Halo 4. The same **** is everywhere, not only in FPS. It's in racing games as well. Sports awlays had it, to be fair.
RPGs got ridden with useless, yet overpriced DLCs...not like the rest is off any better, but you know what I mean. Here, buy a sword of utter annihilation +5 for measly 4.99$. Weapon looks badass, but has stats slightly higher than your starting weapon. :/

I don't even know what I'm ranting about...
I'm going to kill people in Burg.
Laters. o/

Sentiel wrote:
I mean. This is a video game console I'm talking about

W-we are ?
I don't know of any new Video Game Consoles except the new Wii-whatever- it's-called

....epic rant Sentiel. Oh and is that gif in your sig from DD?

It just seems to me the cause of your rage is them elitist twats who play games, not really anything to do with the trophy system/sharing/everything else.
I mean, would you have a problem with trophies if noone cared about them?
And I think that even if they removed all the things you've mentioned above, those same assholes would find another way to feel cool, and force feed other, more humble gamers their leet skills (I don't know leetspeak--fail).

Yes, it's a gif of the skill Stone Jungle from Dark Arisen.

That would solve a lot, no doubt, but not everything. If I could turn off Trophy notification and only that notification and if the damned installing and syncing didn't take ages then I would be golden.

About that. You see, I'm on my fourth PS3 and I was using two different consoles at one time, so my Trophies are a huge mess thanks to that, thus it takes the system several minutes to synchronize them and it takes a good 30-60 seconds for Trophy install when I start any game. If the instal was one time, then it's ok, but this occurs EVERY time I want to play something. And the Sync, I have to do it every time when I want to look on mine, or somebody else's profile. I check people's profiles a lot, especially in DkS, to see if they speak English, or if my attempts at communication are futile.

I don't mind them all that much. The install only happens once and you never have to worry about it again. I never look at them because I don't care about them all that much, they are just nice to have.

I do like them because they give you a reason to keep playing the game. Playing without motivation makes for a boring time, unless you play Dark Souls, it is an exception. *ahem* Point is, I probably would never play Dragon's Dogma again if it weren't that I was missing 3 trophies (That and the hard mode). I seldom check trophies unless it is with my friends just to have a little competition (2 way competition: Who has the most trophies in 1 game and who has the most high-trophies). Although really, some trophies are too easy. The Sly Cooper collection was good, but I was shocked by the easiness of their platinum.

That being said, trophies are important (for me) for a game's lifetime. Valkyria Chronicles was a great game I liked, but since it didn't have trophies I found no motivation to continue doing Expert map modes or actual self-imposed challenges.

The problem with trophies is really that they are so straightforward. I hate how you get most by simply playing the game. Trophy marks achievement, but don't tell me it was multiple achievements to beat the game once. Really, maybe 1, 2 or 3 for playthrough, but 13? 14? I would suffice with 1 trophy so long as the trophy was the completion of the storyline.

Trophies/Achievs need to be more inclined to motivate players to continue playing the game or to do other side things. Of course, the game makers usually motivate you with other stuff like secrets, but if that doesn't quite cut it they could always reinforce with these. I remember my friend saying: "There has to be a trophy, obligated, for beating the game in SL1!", which there aren't, even tho it is entirely possible and fair.

Wait, I'm rambling.

I like some of what trophies bring to the table from a social perspective. My problem is when people get too caught up in them. Pop up notifications and sounds are valid concerns and something I'm glad the Vita has not had in my experience.

Here's what I like about them:
-They can work like an analog version of the a Facebook "like." Instead of just "yes I like that" trophies can show how enthusiastic one is about a game. For instance, from my profile you'd notice that I love both Souls games (my only two plats). I also really enjoyed Flower and Linger in Shadows as they are both at 100% as well (no plat to get). One would note that I beat FFXIII but didn't go out of my way playing that game. You can tell that I tend to be the nice guy in games by my commitment in inFamous to doing good deeds, as well as my almost zero motivation to do evil. All of this is meaningless to most strangers but if someone genuinely wants to be an online friend and play with or against me, this is a fun way to delve into a person's personality.

-They can reveal dirty secrets about a person. So your profile says you've only ever played Dark Souls huh? That explains the seemingly impossible setup. Or in my profile.....my one evil inFamous Trophy came because I made a choice I didn't like and shut the game off before it could save so I could see both options (they both sucked but good writing). If I had known it would give my the trophy I would have stuck with my first decision.

-Finally, the biggest reason I like trophies.....like any artist, game developers take a lot of time with their work and there's a lot of things they're dying to share. Trophies are a good way to have them point out things they want you to notice. They're also a good way to dare the player into doing something they might not have considered. So to me, some trophies are directions on getting a little more mileage out of a game I like. Essentially, "oh yeah, that does sound fun." On the flip side, trophies I do not look forward to are not sought. A good example of that is Dokuro on the Vita. I beat it and loved the game. I said, maybe I should Plat it.....the game was awesome, I would like a challenge with it. I looked at the trophy list and saw tedium. On to the next game.


With all that being said, they're certainly a mixed bag.


Sentiel, if it makes you feel better I'll paraphrase a Sony bigwig regarding the social features: When asked if they had considered an always online feature to the system, he responded that there are people in countries all over the world who don't have internet and "They'd like to sell them a console too." Hopefully that means that all the social stuff will be optional.

Always online and social features are quite diffrerent.
Yes, when compared to Xbox ONE, not needing to be online is great. Well I think it's quite normal, it's not something that deserves praise, on the contrary, Microsponge deserves bankrupcy for even trying to implement such features. Don't fix what's not broken and don't change what works fine.
Most of the consoles I had, had no idea what the hell is internet. First console that I could connect to the web was PS2, but I never bothered to even find out how. Adding the net to the console was a great idea, but making the console require it is borderline stupidity and the exact opposite of how it used to be. I don't understand why. If I wanted the net, or Trophies, or social features, it would be nice to have them, but if I didn't want them, it would be nice to NOT have them. However, both Sony and Microsoft are forcing these things on me without my consent. To quote Adam Jensen from Deus Ex "I never asked for this..."

Change is life and I have nothing against it, but these changes aren't to make te game better, or deepen the atmosphere, enchance the enjoyment. It's all a bunch of marketing dung to lure more people to the console and to make more money. I don't know a single person, playing video games for some years, that would say "Oh gee, I totally want to share this on my FB!". Thanks to that and my personal opinion, I see nothing positive from any of these changes, so I logically don't want them there. I know. I can only rant, as I always do. I can't really change anything. The only thing that lies on me is if to buy, or don't buy. Neither of those leads to what I want.

There are issues that needs attention and fixing and lot of stuff that can be added that I'm sure people would welcome. Not any of this dung.
As an example of few.
~PS3 has horrible browser. Doesn't support latest flash. Freezes in 85% cases. And there are many other fails with it. Any who used it will probably agree.
~Clans. Ever been in one? What if you don't have anyone with skills to make your own website. Not to mention the money. You know the chore of making the clan all over again in each game? It's pain in Asylum Demons huge butt. Enable it on PSN. Make PSN users create PSN based clans that would transfer into games automatically.
~XMB loading. Ever wanted to write a quick message to your teammate, in a game, that is too stupid to allow text messaging and relies only on voice chat which you don't want to / cannot use? Well XMB says no. The damn thing is so freaking slow and the system fails to recognize your words if you type too fast and misplace them, creating horrible typos, or moving parts of of sentences elsewhere in the text at it's own leisure. PSN Chatrooms are infamous for this.
~So tell me. My PS3 can turn itself on by itself if I set it to do so, but it can't recharge my controller while it's turned off. Why? There's no friggin reason for it to be unable to do this simple task. If Xbox can do it, PS3 can do it as well. I mean c'mon, Xbox started on AAA batteries in it's controller, so this feature was added later. PS3 should've had this from start.
~Oi Sony! Disabled PS2 support in PS3 have you you scrubs? Ok, no problem. So why can't I see any good PS1 and PS2 games on your friggin Store you lazy dumbnuts? It's been ages since this was implemented and there's still nothing. Hey I wanna play Ace Combat, where is it? My disc doesn't work, no problem, take my money, I love the game and will gladly buy it again. Whoops it's not on Store. Can I has Leged of Dragoon pls? No, it's only on NA Store? Okay...
This is easy to fix. Very easy. But Sony is unable to do so even after so many years.
~There's so much...

However, my issues lies with being online. What then? Can I turn off the social features? Now, you may seem to think that it will be possible, but the same situation was already here with Trophies. And pardon me, but I don't see the option to turn them off. The solution of being offline is like saying the usual "Don't like it? Deal with it." Why? Why should I be satisfied and accept this state? As I said, I was playing games for 20 years and would love to do so in the future, but I have no interest in any of these features. If anything, my interest lies in their removal. If I'm left with no other choice than to accept them, or leave, I will leave, just as I left my beloved game series when they turned the wrong way. I don't want to do it, but what else is there to do when gold turns insto sh*t than to flush it ad move on?

It's like the YouTube app. It's slow as hell and the Search option must have been designed by a retard, that never heard of keyboard. But ok, at least it has better quality that YT on the browser in PS3, which is constantly locked in 240p.
Ok, so I want to use it, but don't want to go online to PSN, so people won't bother me. I could do that. In the past. Because some ******* came and made the thing PSN only. Want to watch YouTube? Log in to PSN. Without it, it won't work.
I can't even log in. I want to log in and see if any of the guys I follow have posted something new. Did OnlyAfro made another hilarious Arma 3 vid? Did ENB, Mayhem, yukas, or Martyrs upload anything new? Well I can't find out. When you want to log in, it will show you a code that you're supposed to put into your smartphone. Well, what if I don't have one?! Not everybody lives in 'murica and can have Apple all over their flat. I have Apple, but the only thing it supports is worms. Not the funny ones with weapons though. Bringing Apple up maight not have been wise, but the point is that a smartphone is a very expensive and very unnescesary thing for me. But nobody gives a damn if I have one, just like if I want Trophies, or be social. That's what irks me, that's what makes me rant and hate on everything. That I was robbed of the option to say "No!" and actually can choose to do what I want, not what I'm being allowed, or told to do.

Hmmm...
I only wanted to post a short message, but the frustration kept building up until it ended in my most epic rant so far. I'm gonna have to try real hard to outclass this piece of art.