Trophies and Achievements...

[Littlefoot1616]

An interesting (and almost fiery) debate I had with my brother the other day. He can't be arsed with obtaining PS3 Trophies whereas as I love working towards them! It's not a major reason why I play games but I do like having the sense of achievement and having something to work towards besides getting to the end of the game. What makes me laugh though is that, on comparison of our trophy collections, he actually has a better trophy count than me and he claims he doesn't try for them...

*sings* Irony...

What about you guys?

[Kor]

I don't.  Most of the games I play don't even offer any trophies or achievements at all.  If someone else wants to that is their business but it's not my interest at all.

[action9000]

I think the acheivement system is great in some cases.  In my experience, most achievements are simply ways to force the player to play *longer* without having to do things that require much skill, or that require the player to do anything not required by the game anyway.

For example:
A lot of the trophies in Rock Band are simply tasks like "get a tour bus", "get a plane", etc...which are tasks that will just happen as you play the game.  Is a trophy really necessary?

In some cases, the trophies are really cool extra things to work towards, such as, again in Rock Band, reaching 1 million points in a song, achieving an 8x band multiplier, etc.  In the majority of cases though, it takes little more than pure grunt work to reach the trophy and I think that's just poor design on the trophy creators' part.  I love the concept, it just seems like a lot of them aren't very interesting.  The ones that are add a lot to the game. The ones that are just grunt work to achieve don't add much in my mind.

[Andy-rex]

I think the term is "Achievement whore" if you play a game for the soul purpose of getting a higher gamerscore.There isn't a socially accepted vanaculer for people who like to get trophies because frankly. . .nobody really cares about giving gamer slang to the ps.

[metadude1234]

I try to get achievements in gears of war 2 and in halo 3, i also like to collect the skulls in halo 3 because it's fun trying to figure out different strategies once you turn them on, for instance...when i play halo 3 i turn on the fire at the hip skull. in game you have no aimer, no hud and you can't see your gun or arms. it improves skill, that is what i thinkl

[The Chronicler]

I haven't played a lot of games that even have achievements, but for the ones that do, I definitely go for them. Achievements give me something to actually go for (why else are they called "achievements"? ), rather than just me telling myself to do this and that only because I feel like it. Achievements really encourage me to get a full experience of a game, rather than just try a few things I find interesting.

My best example is also my most recent one: Civilization V. In the earlier games in the series which had no achievements at all, I only played the scenarios and occasionally a few custom games, and I would always play on the easiest difficulty level. Now, with Civilization V having achievements on Steam, I've actually done the opposite. I've played lots of custom games to get the easier achievements, but not yet even tried the scenarios because some achievements require using the harder difficulty levels (something that, before this game, I never would have even considered trying).

Put simply, achievements offer real encouragement to get the full experience of a game.

[Kor]

I just play games that are fun.  Don't think I've played more then maybe a few that have achievements but I mainly ignore achievements.

[rhombus]

I also tend to ignore achievements.  However, I did enjoy the use of achievements in Minecraft, where they served the purpose of slowly guiding a new player through the game.  If they were not available there are certain aspects of the game (like going into The End) that I would have probably avoided and never had experienced.

[bushwacked]

I won't play a game just for the achievements. But I do think they add something more to it. It's always fun to see the achievement ping up when you get it, and they usually encourage you to ply through the game loads more times than usual.

[WeirdRaptor]

I play games for fun. Achievements only exist for bragging rights, and I will have no part of that.

[DarkHououmon]

Sometimes. Mostly for fun and to see what I can do. But I'm not too crazy about them. Yeah, they're neat. But I don't see them as necessary for my gaming experience.

[Nick22]

i try to get 100 percent on my games and i have on a few of them. getting a platinum trophy is fun

[Justin1993]

I collect them for fun. I don't know why, but the little ding or pop (is that the right onomatopoeia for the achievements) when getting one is somehow satisfying.

[Campion1]

Achievements work best when applied as they're described.