Achievements and Trophies

[Skyblade]

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.

Ok, let's see. You are playing CoD 4, and you kill two things. One gives 70 exp, and another gives 69. Playing CoD MW2, however, you do the same thing and get 695 for each. Since it takes 10 times more experience to do anything, it has no effect on the game.

Or, let's say you would have gotten 69 for both kills in CoD 4, but get 699 for each in CoD MW2. Will that "add up" to a better total? Of course not. Because CoD MW2 is designed for that level of experience. The same number of kills will get you the exact same level of experience, relative to the game. Maybe you'll gain a level 5 kills faster than you would have in CoD 4. But the designers would have seen this faster levelling coming and designed the enemies to become stronger that much faster as well. The actual exp numbers are meaningless.

Also, take note of something here. Video games and banking are very different. For one things, Bankers can see and use the numbers for more than a second, for one thing. Most video gamers also would much rather use less math than bankers do every day. Bankers also design their numbers to get the bankers as much money as possible, while video game designers calculate their numbers for balanced gameplay. If you seriously think you are getting any advantage out of the extra .5 exp for each kill, you are sadly deluding yourself.



Now, let's address the damage caps. FFX would have played exactly the same without the extra decimal point. If players did a max of 999 damage before Break Damage Limit, and 9999 after it, the monsters could have their HP divided by 10 and the game would have played exactly the same. Break Damage Limit introduced a gameplay change, but just adding an extra decimal did nothing, because every monster in the game is designed to handle it, even Braska's Final Aeon.

And, no, changing the 999 to 9999 didn't have any change. Changes in stat growth and levels are all redesigned each time a number is added. It doesn't change the curve at all. What is important for the growth curve is how quickly the damage climbs, how fast you go from 1 damage to 10, to 100, and finally reach whatever the cap is (and how fast the monsters follow that growth rate with their HP as well).

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.

The secret ones will hopefully contain a lot more than just progressing the story, yeah. Having 30 or so achievements for running through the plot is going to be annoying. As long as they have to be there, I would much rather get them for difficult side quests.

Not that achievements are actually that new. The Sky Pirate's Den in XII was essentially an achievement list anyway. There were plenty of sidequest monster kills in there (Gilgamesh, Carrot, etcetera). Though, looking back, it is sad how few of even those monsters had any story or dialogue tied to them.