Achievements and Trophies

[Raistlin]

Haha, I actually thought about how what I said basically invalidates all those people showing off achievements on XBL. Yeah, people are dumb.

[Crop]

I love Trophies, they're the main reason I play most PS3 games. Which is why I don't like to see them on FFXIII.
I mean: I'll get the game the day it comes out, but I feel i'll focus more on trophies than actually enjoying the game.

I'd rather this game had none tbh.

[Skyblade]

Apparently adding easy achievements to a 360 game will bost sales by 40,000.

News: Gearbox: easy Achievements mean 40,000 extra sales - Official Xbox 360 Magazine
(Warning, anyone who reads this may die a little inside.)

Ok then:

We'll do a bunch like "start a new game". "Pause the game". "Pause the game 3 times", etc.

They'll be over in the first 5 minutes, the people who like trophies can brag about their high numbers, and the people who actually play the game can ignore them.

[BustaMo]

It's good to see these being revealed which means that FFXIII is one step closer to hitting shelves soon.

Even though I'll be tempted to look at the Achievement list for the Xbox 360 version of the game, I'm gonna try to hold off on it so I don't spoil any part of the story for myself.

[Rad Bromance]

I don't understand the point of story achievements. Isn't getting to that point in a game more rewarding than a pointless notification which says simply... that you've gotten to that point in the game?

Yeah, when I first got my Xbox 360 and played Lost Odyssey, and it kept telling me "You Got Achievement blah blah blah!" when I didn't actually do anything but progress in the story, it seemed incredibly pointless and silly to me.

But now I understand it's so all your buddies can see how you're progressing, which is cool I guess, but not something I particularly care about.

[Skyblade]

I don't understand the point of story achievements. Isn't getting to that point in a game more rewarding than a pointless notification which says simply... that you've gotten to that point in the game?

Yeah, when I first got my Xbox 360 and played Lost Odyssey, and it kept telling me "You Got Achievement blah blah blah!" when I didn't actually do anything but progress in the story, it seemed incredibly pointless and silly to me.

But now I understand it's so all your buddies can see how you're progressing, which is cool I guess, but not something I particularly care about.

Whatever happend to "Guys, I just barely squeaked by that boss the other day. Totally epic fight!". I mean, if they're actually your friends, you should be able to, you know, communicate with them outside of automatic updates. And if they're not your friends, who cares what they know of your progress?

[Rad Bromance]

I don't understand the point of story achievements. Isn't getting to that point in a game more rewarding than a pointless notification which says simply... that you've gotten to that point in the game?

Yeah, when I first got my Xbox 360 and played Lost Odyssey, and it kept telling me "You Got Achievement blah blah blah!" when I didn't actually do anything but progress in the story, it seemed incredibly pointless and silly to me.

But now I understand it's so all your buddies can see how you're progressing, which is cool I guess, but not something I particularly care about.

Whatever happend to "Guys, I just barely squeaked by that boss the other day. Totally epic fight!". I mean, if they're actually your friends, you should be able to, you know, communicate with them outside of automatic updates. And if they're not your friends, who cares what they know of your progress?

Precisely, that's why I couldn't really care less about said achievements/trophies.

[Vyk]

Apparently adding easy achievements to a 360 game will bost sales by 40,000.

News: Gearbox: easy Achievements mean 40,000 extra sales - Official Xbox 360 Magazine
(Warning, anyone who reads this may die a little inside.)

Not reading the article. But I'm pretty sure all the achievements on 360 are -also- trophies on ps3

[Goldenboko]

Larger numbers do not a better game make, and wish to hell they'd get over it. Yiazmat was bad enough.

I agree and disagree. Yiazmat was bad because he's HP was grossly higher then the amount of damage you can deal. But sometimes adding a zero can allow little nuances to be added to a game. A good example where creating larger numbers was CoD MW2's online. They threw an extra zero on the end of everything, so leveling stayed the same, however they where able to throw tiny XP boosts that would've in the tenth decimal places (and therefore looked really, really odd) in CoD4.

I don't understand the point of story achievements. Isn't getting to that point in a game more rewarding than a pointless notification which says simply... that you've gotten to that point in the game?

Yeah, when I first got my Xbox 360 and played Lost Odyssey, and it kept telling me "You Got Achievement blah blah blah!" when I didn't actually do anything but progress in the story, it seemed incredibly pointless and silly to me.

But now I understand it's so all your buddies can see how you're progressing, which is cool I guess, but not something I particularly care about.

Whatever happend to "Guys, I just barely squeaked by that boss the other day. Totally epic fight!". I mean, if they're actually your friends, you should be able to, you know, communicate with them outside of automatic updates. And if they're not your friends, who cares what they know of your progress?

Precisely, that's why I couldn't really care less about said achievements/trophies.

Well for really difficult, near unbelievable things ("Ninja Gaiden II on Master Ninja? gtfo you liar") proof is nice.

[VeloZer0]

I don't think anyone dislikes achievements for actually achieving stuff, just achievements for regular game play. While numbers need to be large enough that you can play with them, the bigger they are the harder they are to keep track of, especially when you have all the numbers from multi hit moves flashing across the screen.

[Skyblade]

Larger numbers do not a better game make, and wish to hell they'd get over it. Yiazmat was bad enough.

I agree and disagree. Yiazmat was bad because he's HP was grossly higher then the amount of damage you can deal. But sometimes adding a zero can allow little nuances to be added to a game. A good example where creating larger numbers was CoD MW2's online. They threw an extra zero on the end of everything, so leveling stayed the same, however they where able to throw tiny XP boosts that would've in the tenth decimal places (and therefore looked really, really odd) in CoD4.

Actually, he was bad because he was as broken as the rest of XII's gameplay. The only things that made him difficult was the high HP and the ability he had to instant kill any party member or even your entire party. He's not actually that hard, he's just tedious, time consuming, and cheap.

And, sorry, but how exactly did throwing the extra zero on the end of CoD MW2's numbers help? Did the game really change that much because of the extra numbers? No. The game was exactly the same. The extra points which would have been decimals in the original system could have just been rounded and no one would have cared.

Tell me, when you see "232158" flash on the screen after you deal damage or get experience, do you really give a damn what that last number is? Hell, no. It is so small in relation to the total that it is meaningless. You wouldn't go grind for the last 3 exp you needed, you'd just go kill something and get a couple thousand. The extra points are meaningless clutter, and should be removed. 999 served the FF franchise as a cap for quite a while, and it did fine. Then, 9999 did just as well, despite the added number having no effect on gameplay at all. FFX gave us 99999, again with no actual effect on gameplay (the ability to break the base damage limit had a gameplay effect, but that could have been introduced no matter what the corresponding numbers were), and now we're switching to 999999?! How many FF games is it going to be until we're left with more numbers than will fit on the stupid screen (especially with multi-attacks)?!

Is the game really so pathetic and shallow that they have to use meaningless cosmetic changes like that to draw people in? Do they honestly think that simply increasing the numbers is an improvement to the game's quality?

It's a ridiculous trend that has no positive gameplay effects, and will only drag down game quality if it continues. It does not bode well for the future.

[Mirage]

After playing Disgaea I can definitively say larger numbers is a bad direction in which to be heading in. When you are hitting for 10000000 + on a regular basis it becomes extremely difficult to keep track of how much damage you are actually doing. I know I have miss estimated the damage being thrown around simply because I didn't get a chance to count the decimal places before the number popped off the screen.

That was fixed in Disgaea 2 :p. If you do more than 100000 damage, the game just prints "100k".

[Goldenboko]

Larger numbers do not a better game make, and wish to hell they'd get over it. Yiazmat was bad enough.

I agree and disagree. Yiazmat was bad because he's HP was grossly higher then the amount of damage you can deal. But sometimes adding a zero can allow little nuances to be added to a game. A good example where creating larger numbers was CoD MW2's online. They threw an extra zero on the end of everything, so leveling stayed the same, however they where able to throw tiny XP boosts that would've in the tenth decimal places (and therefore looked really, really odd) in CoD4.

Tell me, when you see "232158" flash on the screen after you deal damage or get experience, do you really give a damn what that last number is? Hell, no. It is so small in relation to the total that it is meaningless. You wouldn't go grind for the last 3 exp you needed, you'd just go kill something and get a couple thousand. The extra points are meaningless clutter, and should be removed. 999 served the FF franchise as a cap for quite a while, and it did fine. Then, 9999 did just as well, despite the added number having no effect on gameplay at all. FFX gave us 99999, again with no actual effect on gameplay (the ability to break the base damage limit had a gameplay effect, but that could have been introduced no matter what the corresponding numbers were), and now we're switching to 999999?! How many FF games is it going to be until we're left with more numbers than will fit on the stupid screen (especially with multi-attacks)?!

Two things here.

First off, the bolded part is how banks make a lot of cash. When they round away a penny from you, you say, "Oh, it's just a penny." Do you know what 1,000,000 pennies add up to? TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS >:0
Case in point, I'll take that 50 or 5 xp that wouldn't have existed in CoD4 because it will add up, and it's neat to do the things that get you it.

Next, switching from 999 to 9,999 had a big difference. It allowed the experience curve to be manipulated. Same with FFX. It allowed almost layered gameplay. Sure Braska's Final Aeon is tough at a lower level. But once you can deal 99,999 per hit he's easy. However, by that time you have to deal with Nemesis/Penance.

Also, what Mirage said about Disgaea.

[Jibril]

Actually, he was bad because he was as broken as the rest of XII's gameplay. The only things that made him difficult was the high HP and the ability he had to instant kill any party member or even your entire party. He's not actually that hard, he's just tedious, time consuming, and cheap.

You just described the extent of "difficulty" in every role-playing game ever made, good job

[G13]

After reading this page I had to double check I was still in the Achievements/Trophies thread.

Those Trophies seem a bit pathetic. Master this and deal lots of damage? Doesn't seem like there's gonna be much to the side stories from that, unless any of those are with the secret ones.

I'll admit I'm an Achievement junkie. Seeing such a pathetic list of Achievements makes me think it'd be pointless getting it for the Xbox, which after hearing about the amount of discs there may be was my only reason to get it for Xbox. What to do, what to do.