Either one or both works.
Mine is completing the Pokedex in the original Pokemon games. All you get is just Professor Oak giving you a wink and a small few second cut scene. And a congratulations text. Imagine spending all of your time then, getting all 151 and even 252 pokemon just for that? Yeah no thanks, I never completed the pokedex.
Going the Joja-Route in Stardew Valley. I say this mainly because, it is what you make of it. You forfeit being able to complete the Community Center by earning things, when you sign your soul away to Joja. What I would’ve liked is seeing Pierre go out of business completely. I just think that would add a route of depth in the game where you have to make ends meet through Joja because Pierre is permanently closed.
But, that doesn’t happen, he’ll still be in business despite his depression about Joja running things. Kindof ruins the whole concept of doing it for the achievements even.
Beating Dark Souls 2 without dying or using a bonfire rewards you with a ring that makes your right hand weapon completely invisible.
It isn’t worth it at fucking all, since there is a spell that does the same thing and is way easier to obtain (even in 2025 despite being a multiplayer rank reward). The spell and ring also have ZERO effect on PvE and it rarely matters in PvP when the animations of your body instantly reflect the size of your weapon to a good enough player. Like, I don’t need to see your Ultragreatsword to know that’s what you are swinging when your arm starts hefting the weight.
I draw the line at whether it’s something that can be done naturally, as a result of playing the game and enjoying it enough to put in that much time. I’ll entertain trying to 100% a game that has an achievement to farm 1000 of some herb, if it’s something that I’ll just come across in due time by making full use of all the game mechanics, and presumably see some form of in-game payoff for my efforts. I’ll instantly become content with just seeing the credits if an achievement to get a similar quantity of something is just an excuse to pad play time by making me grind some monster drops just for the sake of getting that last achievement.
I’m at 99% of RDR2 for like 2 years now because I can’t be bothered to do the dominoes part of the gambling challenge.
Any challenges from Ubisoft games.
Breath of the Wild: getting all 900 or whatever Korok seeds. The reward is a golden Korok seed whose shape makes it very obvious that you’ve been cleaning up Korok poop this whole time. Pretty funny prank for Nintendo to pull tbh.
Hey, that’s not fair. If you complete the original 150 Pokedex, you also get a little diploma you can print on your GameBoy Printer.
On the whole, achievements encourage players to do stuff that isn’t fun. Sometimes they’re funny or encourage good gameplay, but too often they’re just busywork, mindless random drops, or insane investments in time/skill.
But dodging 100 random lightning bolts is fun!!
Too many people seem too focused on getting 100%/Platinum though, and I feel like that’s almost always going to end up in a kind of exploration grind, or just having achievements for playing the game.
The best achievements imo is when you do something random and get an achievement for it, then youll be able to see how many other players managed the same.
I enjoyed the Tokyo Drift achievement in Sea of Thieves. I was running from a larger ship and naturally thought of going full steer around a rock and dropping anchor. It worked! We lived.
Achievements (for me, at least) are just a reason to spend more time with a game that I enjoy. In most cases, I have trouble enjoying a game if I don’t have goals to work towards (either game-imposed or self-imposed). If I finish the main part of the game, and am not tired of it yet, achievements give me goals that I can follow if I want to keep playing.
Definitely agree that there’s too many games that have achievements that are just in no way worth the time and aren’t even fun as an auxiliary goal, though. The best ones are the ones that get you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t (e.g. playing a non-standard playthrough of the game). The lazy ones (‘Kill X enemies, Earn Y dollars’) are just busywork or earned ‘automatically’ while doing other things and add nothing.
Yeah I agree with this. Most achievements just don’t have the fun or inquisitive nature they should and are pretty much meaningless.
Trophies can be very fun when they incentivize the player to interact with the game in ways that you normally don’t do during a regular play through.
Most games have trophies designed by some corporate drone and consist of a handful of trophies giving for completing the storyline and the rest for token actions that you’ll inevitably do while playing. They fucking suck!
Ratchet and Clank did it right back in the day before trophies with their Skill Point system. Little fun challenges that you wouldn’t normally do. Gave you points to unlock some skins and cheats.
Is that really so much to ask for… yeah I already know the answer.
Most games have trophies designed by some corporate drone and consist of a handful of trophies giving for completing the storyline and the rest for token actions that you’ll inevitably do while playing.
Those are basically just publicly accessible analytics for how far people typically get in a game.
They weren’t trophies but I liked the challenges for Titanfall 1 that allowed you to ascend to the next level.
They were mainly using different weapons that I probably wouldn’t have tried because they didn’t seem as good as the easier to use weapons.
After someone on Lemmy recommended Dwarf Eats Mountain (it’s okay), I checked out the idle game genre for the first time.
On one extreme, Magic Archery was completed in under an hour and all seven achievements were earned during normal gameplay.
But most other idle games, ho boy. They tend to have several hundred achievements, many of which would take literal weeks if not months to achieve, and often require resetting the game back to the start dozens of times due to prestige mechanics that are necessary for late-game progression.
Action games, for the most part, have well-thought achievements, TBH. If designed well, they can nudge you towards the intended way to play the game and by the time you’re done, you will have mastered the gameplay or got really close.
In Hi-Fi Rush, for example, some achievements encourage you to parry, parry counter, air juggle… etc.
Beg to differ on the Pokemon example, but then again I am a completionist so that type of challenge gives me lots of self satisfaction (plus now I have achievements through RetroAchevements so a little bragging rights). Frankly, things like that should have internal motivation, so literally no reward is fine by me. I’m literally doing a professor oak challenge right now, which is significantly worse, lol.
Where I draw the line is mostly challenges that I just don’t see myself being able to accomplish in a given lifetime. Like the Balatro golden chip on every joker is way too RNG and time consuming for me. I also generally prefer not to have to do a speed run, but that’s mostly because I have kids now and setting something down without worrying about time is ideal.
The professor oak challenge is rough lol. I tried it out on Pokemon Silver and must have spent well over 10 hours grinding to get my Feraligatr.
It’s mostly awful for the first two badges, but playing with fast forward I beat my first badge in White 2 with in game time around 65 hours (so probably around 15 hours). It’s insanely tedious, but I enjoy it late game.
Megabonk has some “fun” challenges that probably counts towards both. I did the “AFK gaming” one, where your character isn’t allowed to be moved by the player ( a huge handicap). It was kind of fun figuring out which character would be best, what pickups to prioritize etc.
Super-bosses that award ultimate weapons… like why am I going to use this weapon now that the biggest challenge is done?
It’s for the secret boss!
You killed the ultimate boss; now with their drop you are the setting’s ultimate boss. You just need to wait for another plucky young upstart to rise and take you down.
Diablo spoiler?
Ehhhhh… Kinda, not really. The wizard goes mad, the rogue aligns with evil and the warrior failed to contain the big evil and is possessed by it.
Doesn’t sound like final boss to me.
I may be wrong, didn’t follow the series much, but wasn’t Diablo2 BBEG the player from the first one turned evil?
Or many of the Soulsborne games.
Tap for spoiler
Replacing Gehrman in one of the Bloodborne endings being the most direct example.
Rarely even happens in-universe.
You might need them for ultra-bosses that reward ultimate ultimate weapons.
There is sadistic satisfaction to be had from absolutely nuking enemies who gave you trouble before.
I also like collecting shiny things.
As someone who has in fact completed both the original Gen 1 and the full Gen 2 Pokedex (including Mew and MissingNo.), I genuinely can’t imagine playing through a Pokemon game without at least completing the regional pokedex. Collecting the creatures is what I play those types of games for.
And the reward isn’t the little completion diploma Oak gives you to print out. It’s the self satisfaction that comes with finishing your goal. Like getting all the achievements in a game; I don’t get anything whatsoever for that, but I still like to do it. Because I’m a completionist.
I cleared all the question marks in Skellige in Witcher 3. I expected…something…anything?
The payoff is in Cyberpunk.
i broke the boat in the middle of the water and then quit the game for few months
Not worth it getting all the Korok seeds in BotW
You can beat factorio with extremely inefficient gameplay, layout, etc. There are two achievements in that sort of “taught” me how to play better. First was the one that limited how many items you could handcraft, and second was the speedrun achievements. Both were doable but forced me to automate more and plan things out in advance, and I can’t remember any other game’s achievements that qualitatively changed how I played.
Oh BTW I am currently waiting to complete a “challenge” (its an achievement) for a special game, with a special achievement. All I have to do is, not to play the game. No seriously, “The Stanley Parable” has a famous achievement, that you get if you don’t launch the game for 5 years. The fun story is, I purchased the game just to get this achievement. Really. I purchased it and waited 5 years, then installed it and run it.
But wait, why don’t I get the achievement? After an investigation I came to realize that the game has to run at least once, so the timer starts counting. Well, since then I played the game and wait another 5 years. I almost reached the fifth year. So to complete everything (which I did not honestly) you would need to do not to play the game. Is it worth it? I say absolutely!
Change your system time and relaunch the game for a sneaky cheat.
Yeah I know, there are methods. But I want to “earn” it the right way, as I don’t like cheating for this kind of stuff. But thanks for the tip nonetheless. Edit: Especially as I’m in the ninth year now…
The Stanley Parable is a meta game - a game about playing and making games. And there you are having fun not playing a game…
