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.
Super-bosses that award ultimate weapons… like why am I going to use this weapon now that the biggest challenge is done?
You might need them for ultra-bosses that reward ultimate ultimate weapons.
Worth in my opinion: 100%ing Celeste – it felt rewarding to 100% the game, and there are even extra collectibles if you really want to challenge yourself but I really appreciate this was not part of the 100% completion for all the achievements.
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!
I hunt down achievements when I enjoy the game and the achievements sound fun and not busywork. If it’s interesting side quests, minigames, or fun challenges, I almost always do them. I also like playing at max difficulty when it’s fair.
If it’s about going through a checklist to collect 100 feathers or spending 50 hours learning the entire game by heart to complete some hardcore challenge, I’d rather do something else with my time.
Factorio: lazy bastard is not worth getting but there is no spoon is absolutely worth getting. People over estimate how much is required pre rocket and get bogged down in these over engineered designs. After finishing thre is no spoon you realise how little is actually required and its best to just go build something than try design the perfect system that lasts into the megabase era.
My first full Factorio playthrough was a Lazy Bastard run. The game is a lot more chill when turning off biter expansions & turning up trees slightly in the map gen.
Granted I think I racked up like 200hrs in that run, largely because I could leave the game running in the background whilst going off to study or do other stuff. Once you’re past the intial stage & have a mall set up, hand-crafting really doesn’t matter much.
There is no spoon was alright as a goal, but it also ends up being a definitive end to that playthrough (which, arguably, can be both good and bad).
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.
Well, to me this is worth it, because the journey is. Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is a similar thing. Doing all of the work for just a checkmark is not really worth it, but the adventure and the fun I have doing all of this is worth it. I am not after the price, but after the experience. Therefore its worth it, if its fun to do.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah I agree with this. Most achievements just don’t have the fun or inquisitive nature they should and are pretty much meaningless.
Finishing a Dark Souls game.
And finishing a Dark Souls game.
I was going to say Soul Level 1 playthrough of Dark Souls is one of my favorite gaming experiences. Absolutely worth it for me. Helped me through some depression. Do not recommend to anyone however.
I was debating saying beating Consort Radahn. It took me about a day of grinding to learn patterns, figure out strategies, find all the upgrades, and simply have the best RNG.
I didn’t want to respect and just cheese him either. I will never attempt to beat him again, but I do feel satisfied that I beat him.
Any “no death” achievements/challenges in souls-like games. I don’t see a point in struggling for weeks/months just for a small badge on my account.
On the other hand, 100%'ing certain games like Stardew Valley is definitely worth it. I won’t spoil what happens, but just know that it is worth doing.
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.
When I finish a game naturally I look at the list of stuff I didn’t do yet, and think “how much time will this take? Will I even remember doing completionist stuff in 5 years or would it be better to start a new game?”
I think something that makes a challenge worth it or not in a game is a combination of how fun it is and how much time it will take.
I recently got all the achievements in Another Crab’s Treasure. Most of the achievements you get naturally from playing the game, and I only had to hunt down a handful once I completed the game. All I had to do was fight 1 optional boss that I missed, grind a little bit to buy shells from a store, and play a couple of hours into NG+. Hunting those down was worth it because the combat is fun, and it showed that things are different in NG+ (I had to fight a brand new boss that wasn’t in the regular game), plus it didn’t take more than 3-4 hours.
On the other hand, I also played Schedule 1 again (post cartel update, but before shrooms were added). I love the game. I love the process of starting small and doing everything myself, and eventually building up to buy other properties, hiring employees, and refining the process to be more efficient. But man, that achievement to get $10 million is fucking nuts. I had all the properties producing drugs, the dealers and I were overflowing with product and I still haven’t gotten the $1 million achievement either. The game stopped being fun because everything was built up and I was basically there to restock the properties. Also actually getting to $10 million would have taken forever, so I gave up on it. I’ll definitely go back and play the game again, but I think I’ll wait until there’s another update after the one that added shrooms.
Gosh, y’know, these days breathing gives you an achievement because gamers like to get achievements to have achievements. Why do gamers like to have achievements? Sense of pride and accomplishment, I suppose. And because I am very simple, I’m the same - I crave that dopamine of the li’l 🎶Di-Ding. And platinuming a game is of course more dopamine. It’s just very useless in most games, it’s nothing but a number somewhere in some statistics. Paradoxically, I think nobody needs achievements and I’m annoyed at how important they’ve become, and at the same time I’m disappointed if there are none.
Challenges that give me equipment that simply has some better stats are … well, challenging. Especially when I don’t get around to them until after I finish the story. That’s when I care the least about increasing my ice damage by 2 points.
Make me explore the world to find things, that’s my jam. Especially if the things I find add to the lore. … No I can’t think of any examples right now.
I 100% RDR and killing cougars with a knife still haunts me. It’s exactly as it sounds. Go do melee combat with a gigantic pissed off cat that almost always comes in pairs, sometimes a trio.
I fucking hate how if certain animals come at you at a particular angle, there’s literally nothing you can do. Sure they give you the button-mash prompt, but it does literally nothing, and you still get mailed to death. Every. Single. Time.
Completing the Pokedex is pretty cool.
I’ve come close to getting all the capsule toys in Shenmue but in the end it was a lot if reloading saves and eventually I gave up. I barley finish any games so doing extra challenges is even rarer for me :/
