I hope to attract the attention of the authors of Stopheim to the topic of achievements in games with this small post. Amazing, but despite the long period of existence, no one ever obsents them. Although this is a full -fledged game designer: there is the main task of the game, there are secondary tasks. Than achievements worse? That after them the credits do not go? And do not say that they are optional and nobody needs. Platinating is a whole cult, and for each game in Steam there is sure to have a guide to unlock it. Even if less than 1% of players took advantage of it.
Why achievements are important
I want to tell a personal story. As a child, I had a huge collection of discs, as well as other artifacts of the nineties and zero. And at some point, my parents decided to get rid of all this and I passively agreed, since "it’s time to grow up". And a year later I regret it, since the lion’s part of my youth was simply thrown into the trash. It’s how to get rid of a photo album with memories. And now, when there is Steam, I can ferment the list of games and to strop on the time spent in the game: how many hours, what screenshots I did, what I discussed on the forum, what guidelines I read and wrote, how many achievements I knocked out. Collecting is the oldest hobby of mankind and you do not need to belittle.
I am silent about the fact that now knocking out platinum is a full -fledged cosmetic pumping of an account on the platform.
What are "good achievements"
The prize should be issued for victory, and not for participation. Platinum is a challenge to skill and acquiring a new experience, and not a reason to engage in a boring routine. Now if the game comes out and is a donation garbage with a grind, this is indicated in the review. The same should occur with achievements. Is it interesting to fulfill them? Normal people can be recommended by knocking out platinum in this game? In fact, this is a good question, because in some games they are surprisingly adequate, and in some they require several hundred hours from the player. Serious Sam 4 and Quake 1 – examples of games with good platinum.
More developers need to ask the question: “You will play it yourself?". Doom (2016) – a good example. Before the release of the game in one of the interviews, the creators said that no one had already mastered the game on an absolute nightmare in their team. I really want to ask: “And what the hell?". Why introduce a mode that the fan does not bring to you and you could not even test it. I understand that there will always be nerds, but the game should bring the fun of most of the audience. You do not need to come up with a lot of mind to come up with complex and impossible tasks, to make them interesting – this is where skill and talent are needed. For me, the game is a challenge from a developer. If the Creator himself cannot overpower what he asked me, then he is no better than a teacher at school, who himself cannot complete tasks without a manual. If my will, I would oblige the developers before releasing the game without fail to personally knock out the platinum, and only upon reaching the result should be allowed into production.
Here I want to mention the website https://paris-casino.co.uk/ Retroachievements, on which players themselves come up with tests for old games. You need to register on the site, connect the account to the emulator and go to knock out the platinum. All progress is stored on the site and tied to an account. Most of these achievements are interesting and adequate, because they were created by a community for themselves – those who will play and knock out all this, and not just for the sake of a checkpoint or gust of sick imagination.
It is also worth noting such a situation that Achivka is sometimes invented for streamers, and not for ordinary players. Don’t do that. The first money earns, and do not receive a fan from passing, like the second. Games are primarily an entertaining product.
What are "bad achievements"
These are missing as such. In 2020, Bethesda has re-released Doom 1-2 and there are still no achievements in this dilogy. At the same time, in Doom 3: BFG Edition they are. The new games, as a rule, have no problems with this, but in our time remasters and remakes all looks lazy.
Missing achievements for the level of difficulties. Surprisingly, most shooters do not have Achivka for playing the game on the hard. Doom (2016), Doom Eternal, Serious Sam 4, Prodeus, Postal: Brain Damage, Quake 2 and others. All these games do not care how you play them. It is interesting that in the remaster of Quake 2 there are no achievements related to the level of complexity, but in the first part from the same studio, half of them were about “passing on a nightmare”. Perhaps all this is done so that it is easier for casual players to knock out platinum, compensating for it with grinds, but certainly no one will say. Also in the latest games from ID in internal Achivka they are, but there is no on the platform. Maybe it is for the better, because the platinum Wolfenstein II does not cause anything except.
Different combinations of difficulty levels and additional conditions. There are achievements in the spirit of "Pass the boss with only cowards on your head". This is a good test, but it is counted both at light and high levels of complexity. And most likely the player will choose the first option, because if the developers do not care, then why should the player be important.
Collective Bolses. Collect 100500+ notes, cards, towers and other things. It is especially unpleasant when the game is arranged so that if you haven’t gathered something, you will not return back. Or when the world is so huge that it was problematic to understand that it missed. And it is more profitable at the first launch to open the guide and constantly check with it, instead of just enjoy the game. The same category includes grind, farm and numerous reproduction of the entire game for the key moment. The routine is not an achievement. Another thing is if collective bols are well furnished. Hollow Knight caterpillars is a great example of good game design. At first, the player collects everyone in the course of passing, and in the end, if someone is not enough, the game gives out a card with their position. At the same time, you can collect everyone at any time.
Comic and hidden achievements. If the developer wants to hint the player that there is a content in the game, which can be skipped with a cursory passage, then why not award the player for attentiveness in the game itself? Normally furnishing everything, not forcing the designer’s thoughts to read. The player will still climb into the guides to find out the secrets if he did not find something on his own. It is time to come to terms with the fact that in our age of the Internet you will not do anything secret.
Secrets are generally a separate topic for discussion, because subtle matter of design comes into force. Some of them are so hidden that you can’t do without manuals. And this is honest not to name, because the designer can heal such conditions that no psychic will help: invisible triggers, non -obvious conditions, violation of their own rules. And then the game will tactfully say that the player is stupid – I did not find them all.
In this regard, I like games from Croteam, and specifically Serious Sam 4 and The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna. Secret in a prominent place, his decision is somewhere nearby, all the cards on the table-just think a little. Everything is honest. But in Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem and in the original The Talos Principle there is no such concept, all secrets are hidden in a huge field – go vacuuming every corner of the vast card in search of incomprehensible. And all these nuances must be spoken out when reviewing the game.
Multiplayer achievements. I understand that you need to make the players spend more time in the game, but it’s just terrible. The developer could not create a living network mode, but the player should pay for this, because in most projects the multiplayer is dead, and in pursuit of platinum you need to go into discussions of Steam or Reddit, create a topic and hope for helping good people. Not to mention the fact that most of the network achievements is a random that does not depend on Skill. And everything again rests against the routine knocking out the trophy, and not in the fun.
Thanks for the reading. I hope at least some attention will attract this to the problem.
P. S. And achievements are an excellent argument in disputes on the Internet, as they show statistics of the ratio of those who went through the game and learned all its subtleties, and those who simply bought and quickly ran through. In the best case, the games are 35% of the players, but on average this figure is from 2% to 15%. Therefore, one cannot believe any opinion on the Internet regarding the elaboration of the project.
