It comes across as hysteria to me. Some of the people here are genuinely afraid, which I think underscores why this is an important discussion.

Hopefully this doesn't come out the wrong way/too "haughty", but: You seem to be falling for the same thing he & a few others did ITT...i.e. falling to ascribing possible bad intent to one's actions/words due to their wording or positions on things.

YES, some(in general) have bad intent/motives, but often people just assume they do to maintain their world view on some things or to avoid having to debate some people or continue a conversation.

(Example: Those assuming those who critique achievements or other things want them banned or are alluding to such, like BreOL above)

Yeah, 1 or 2 here seem to be acting like people even saying achievements aren't a good thing for SOME PEOPLE is those people asking for such to be banned OR will lead to achievements being banned....which is sheer nonsense & shows just how much achievements affect some people.

I chuckled. ;)

You can assert anything you like but if you don't substantiate it, you've said nothing that I can intelligently respond to.

I meant the ending bit of your post there asking what their intention was, as if suspicious of some bad intent on their end.
(i.e. some here assumed others here wanted achievements banned, and then you seemed to assume bad intent/motive on the part of that one user you replied to)


Also where did I say I required an intelligent reply? Any reply that touches on what was said would be welcome. :)

ugh. something has gone wrong with my posting to this thread. i had a big response for GR and everything.

let me just say this simply then.

i totally agree that this massively affects some people.
i think that there should be options and settings to deal with achievements (on, off, private, public, whatnot) as you see fit. play how you want to.
i think that the bad side here is overinflated, and the effects overstated.
i don't have proof though.
neither do you. reddit posts are anecdotal evidence (hell, using someone's story as evidence is anecdotal by definition. unless they're an eye witness in a trial they are, unfortunately, anecdotal). memes and tropes are intentionally hyperbolic for comedic effect, and you're seeing a positive bias because people who are not adversely affected are not going to post memes or stories about how ambivalent they are.

so we're at a point where some believe in their gut that achievements are bad. and some believe they are not. but neither side can prove anything unless someone can post a link to a study done on this (omg i would love to read a study on this) but afaik there is no such study.
(and i did read through some of the previously linked gamification study but that's about applying all sorts of gaming mechanisims to the business environment to make staff engage more which is a completely different topic).

so i'd like to sum up here: i don't begrudge you your opinion, but please realise that largely we've been discussing purely opinion here. none of us have objective facts here (and if you do have objective facts then link them).

thanks for the chats

(now watch my previous long post that would go through will double post and spam everyone with my stupid garbage -_- )

Good points. I guess I would just rather people be creative on their own, or amongst each other, than led by the developer. I welcome fan-made challenges (like finishing with a low-level character, etc), so really my hope would be to have gamers talking more amongst each other about stuff like this. Preferably on message boards just like this one!

Well, given that you went on to say in a later post to say that reddit posts are anecdotal evidence, you probably won't like this, but I found this for you: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/201gy7/what_happened_to_cheats/ (only briefly skimread it myself).

Maybe I wasn't as clear earlier, but you have to realize that a lot of what I am complaining about is hypothetical content we missed out on. You're not going to find a developer outright saying "yeah we had extra bonus levels planned for the singleplayer mode, but we cut them in favor of achievements."

The whole point is that achievements are now included, while in-game rewards of the past are not. I already explained earlier that this does not have to be the case and that there is nothing truly stopping a developer from including both achievements and the great content of the past. But that such a developer would be the exception, not the rule.

Very good point that a lot of the reason for missing content that used to be standard in the past is because of multiplayer (though I would argue external achievements are related to multiplayer since the whole point is to compare them to what your friends or other people have, i.e. a type of "meta-"multiplayer game).

No, that part is not subjective, at least with "serious games". If we're talking about immersion in the gameworld, having a consistent uninterrupted gameworld > gameworld interrupted by external stimuli. How could it possibly be otherwise?? Fourth wall breaking games are not that common but you'd have a fair point in that regard.

Oh that's a good one...devs can't write dialogue since it'll be cheesy...but devs can write achievements, and the cheesiness of the achievement texts actually adds to the experience because it's fourth wall breaking humor that you find funny. Come on, man. My point about finite resources holds true regardless of scale, it just may be harder to see on a small scale. And yes, I would take "2 extra lines slapped in because someone had half an hour free and decided that npc X should talk about what they had for lunch for no apparent reason", over achievements added in. That said, for objective immersion purposes, those lines would have to add to the world and not feel jarringly out of place (e.g., such as in tone), or otherwise both them and external achievements would detract from the immersion.

Great, now please explain how this is not YOUR subjective opinion. It's like I said. You know there are finite resources and your preference is to have those resources directed (or at least divvied up more in favor of) the things YOU like. There's no need to try and come up with these post hoc rationalizations about how "a few more lines of dialogue is worth less than adding a few achievements" when that's just your preference and not anything more.

Yes and no. I can only speak for myself:
I don't care about achievements much. I don't hunt them. I often set my own goals in games, even trying to achieve crazy stuff (like the axemaster challenge I mentioned earlier - that was actually my idea and then became the entry test for our Quake clan back in the day, although a bit easier: no time limit, not 100% secrets (but all kills), and hard instead of nightmare difficulty.
But on the other hand if the game acknowledges I did something special (like 10 head shots in a row, or travelling 10,000 miles on foot, find and reading all books in the game... you name it) it's kinda nice to have the game tell me "you're great!". I don't need that, and I've usually turned off any achievement popups (so I only see it in the client once I quit the game), but it can give a nice sense of... well, achievement... if one of those little icons appears.


@thread: I just want to say it's a really interesting discussion with many different points of view. And while some people seem to get rather emotional about the topic, remarkably civil, keep it up :-)
The number of posts says that this is a topic that people really care about, who'd have thunk - not me.

I like that Quake clan entry test!

How do you feel about a game keeping track of stuff like that within say, a Stats menu (like within a Pip-Boy) or sub-menu off of the game's main menu for a more meta-level. In other words all the information would be there for you to check out when you wanted, but without the "external" nature outside the entire game.

And I echo your other comment praising the amount of civil discussion. This topic has been a winner.

Like the MKS (monster kill statistics) of Wizardry? I loved that, and I wish more games had that...

????
I made no claim that you wish achievements to be banned. Where did you get that from?

"Finally you say that it is only a problem if it is being used to sell something or market something to you. First off, as mentioned by others, achievement systems where it suddenly resets to a smaller number when a DLC is released is...such a small segment of achievement systems, it seems ridiculous to condemn all achievemnt systems for that. Never mind the fact that not all games implement them like that (in fact, my game library is not exhaustive, but I can't find any game I have with achievements where I haven't bought the DLC, but my achievement list lists those DLC achievements."

I also stated that for me it's about implementation, rather than achievements per se. Hope that clarifies.

yeah. that reddit thread doesn't have much tangible information. a lot of people guessing, and since the OP says achievements right off the bat he's basically asking for people to focus on achievements.
i'm more of the belief that cheats were mostly used to help QA test, then there was a golden period of silly cheats, and now they're dwindling because they get removed for a variety of reasons. more complicated games means greater possibility of cheats breaking things or glitches accidently turning a cheat on without the player knowing or, probably more likely, multipalyer. i don't know for sure but i doubt achievements are the reason.
i see a lot of games with achievements and colelctables in them. the thing is they tend to be retro inspired and i'm guessing that the reason they're being phased out may partially be because of shareable achievements are easier and standardised, and partially because games have moved on. same way a lot of old retro stuff gets phased out over time.
yep. i think multiplayer is a driving force behind quite a few changes. the whole "connected world" thing is driving a lot of changes in games. achievement, multiplayer, friends lists and chats, all of that has designed for the "always on" future. and games are moving in that direction too. there's another whole discussion - always on and always connected.
no. the immersion part is not subjective fair, but the importance and how much you get taken out of the immersion is. i tune out the achievements when i'm really hooked into a game. i tune out a lot of external things. maybe it's just me, but that's why i say it's subjective. and i'm pretty sure you can usually turn the notifications off if they're not your thing.
for properly implemented achievement no. there'd need to be planning before implementation. i agree. but if they're slapping in achievements it's easy for a dev to add.
dialogue though? no. you don't want devs adding in random dialogue unless you _really_ trust them. devs don't tend to write copy for a good reason, or if they do they get it signed off before checking it in. otherwise you end up with jammy out of place lines that you don't want.
sure.. what i want is totally my subjective opinion. laws of diminishing returns are not my opinion. the examples i used were obviously completely made up, but the principle holds true. the more you have of a single thing the less you value more any of that thing. that's first year economics.
and i said once you have enough dialogue, a couple more lines is going to be worth very little. however any new feature that isn't in the game (achievements or anything else) is going to have a higher value because the game lacks it.
how much value will obviously depend on what the person wants (an ammo counter is likely not going to add value to a farming simulator as most players don't want it) but it's not a stretch to say i'd rather have 10 achievements in a complete point and click adventure than have an extra 10 lines of text on a chat option i might not even choose. fully voiced and in the direct path of chat might be worth more, but it'd have to be some really well written stuff and now we're talking a lot of extra effort compared to adding achievements.
it's all return on investment. the value of each extra bit added vs the investment it takes to add. ROI and diminishing returns are not my subjective opinion.

obviously i'd rather have a complete game without achievements than a buggy game that has them. but a complete game with 5 minutes more game vs the same thing without those 5 minutes, but some enjoyable achievements? i subjectively would value the achievements then.