trophies are next to useless. some creative rewards are ok, but achievement whores simply don't 'earn' these. example: street fighter 4 level all characters to c grade. you could eventually earn this over a long period of time by playing the game genuinely, OR you could do what 90% of my games for the first month after release were - timer on 30 secs, one round to win, try and land a single hit, then run like hell before your opponent realises you're a waste of time. gamerscore is largely irrelevant in terms of gaming skill. I will say that most of the blame for this lies in the hands of developers and their lack of imagination.

The best Achievements or Trophies are the ones that offer some in-game bonus once you complete them.  An example of this is the original Mass Effect game, where acquiring Achievements would improve things like duration of powers or increase certain stats.  Sadly, no other games seem to follow suit.

Good read. I personally dont collect achievements/trophies, but if there was a game out there that i truly enjoyed, i probably would aim for 100%. I am glad as well that trophies/achievements exist, even though for the most part they are more fluff/filler.

I think the greatest benefit of achievements is promoting diversity. In numerous games there have been levels or items i didn't initially like, but after trying to get achievements for them, come to realise their value.

Some devs get all pissy when they review the stat tracking from achievements and see so few people are completing this or that. Perhaps in reality their achievements are just wrong and don't help to promote gameplay in the first place.

I don't know where it started or who came up with these, but achievements are a great addition, agreed with what you wrote. Thanks for posting this.

Who wrote this article the language is terrible!

I am not really a fan of achievements. I never really think to try them because there are to many games to play.

If i was younger like 12-16, all achievements would matter.  But since I become a college graduate, there is lesser time for video games.  I have to play the game, beat it, no side quests.  Even Skyrim, I had to finish the main quest only because there is no time to play all games if you have time for work.

I like the sound they make when you finaly get them but what I don't like is ... you get nothing in reallity. Let's take a game like God Of war 3. I've Platinum the game but I was hoping that I would unlock alternate costume with some quirk like in other GOW but no ... only a trophy for all the difficulty, for finishing the Challenge Of The God ... nothing else ? I flet I did all that for nothing ... I liked the game a lot but still ... I thought something cool would be unlock ... and I saw that those alternate goofy costumes are DLC ...

So in all ... Trophy took the place of the unlockable in a game ... I would like to have a list of challenge but if I complete them I have a unlockable.

I like the concept of trophies and achievements, but what I don't like is that the real purpose - from the game publisher's point of view is to have people willingly monitored as they play a game, even if that game is "off-line". It would be great if it were an unmonitored system of play, but it isn't, and every move you make is being recorded.

I think trophies should be made with consideration, that some trophies are impossible to achieve because of the low MP rate. For example: Neverdead took me and my pal ages to plat, because we were 2 of a kind playing it....instead of easy 4 people walkthrough 

<3

The problem is not all trophies are created equal.  Any game that requires that you beat human opponents in multiplayer is going to be harder than a game that just requires you to grind.  For example, the hardest platinums to get are in fighting games, like Super Street Fighter 4 AE and Mortal Kombat.  The easiest are in games like skyrim and Kingdom of Amalur because all you have to do is grind. 

I hate trophies that rely on drops or luck.  I also hate trophies that require that you play through a game multiple times.  I have the Dark Souls platinum trophy, but I didn't appreciate the fact that you have to play through the game 2.5 times to get all the miracles and weapons.  I also didn't like farming for hours trying to get the last unique weapon to drop for the Knight's Honor trophy. 

I also agree that they are good.  I remember back in the day When I beat all scenarios in RE2 plus HUNK and Tofu I was happy and felt accomplished but I was like "thats it?"  I kind of felt like it would be cool if there was something that proved I did all of that or I got a little or something.  Another example would be in Final Fantasy X how I got all the extra summons and did so many of the side quests.  Having trophies and achievements are nice because I feel having that little badge is nice ot have on your profile showing how much you did in a game.

When the 360 first came out I went crazy over achievements, the concept had been in my head for years and it was cool to see it in action. But here we are in 2012 and I have to say, I feel they're pretty much pointless. It was cool when achievements were offline, not based on DLC or any other things like that. Once they started making achievements an online based thing though it killed it for me. I don't game much online, most people have no ability to play as a team, CoD is just like CS, the round starts, your 'team' bolts in every direction and you proceed to blast everything you see mindlessly as fast as possible. Not much team play there. They also started to come in meaningless quantities, 5 points here, 15 points there. While some achievements are fun to get, or if you consider them bragable I guess, it just really doesn't feel rewarding anymore. I don't even pay attention to them anymore, every once in awhile I'll check out a new game I have to see which achievements I got, only to find 80% of the games achievements require me to play death match mindlessly for days or months. Oh and ANY achievement that you get for being #1 on a game ranking is BULL, bragging rights or not. Any game on the market for more than about a month has two or three people with no lives that do nothing but play that game (Looking at you Halo and CoD fans) making it impossible to ever get the achievement. The list of issues goes on, but what it comes down to is, what do i get for spending all that time getting an achievement? Nothing really. Most likely less than 30 points towards my gamer score, which means nothing really, and that's it. I guess I was hoping back in the day that there would be some reward for obtaining achievements, though I couldn't think of what at this point. Replay value is a matter of game quality, I still boot up my Dreamcast and play Shenmue or Omikron, I don't need achievements to enjoy a good game. A good game is just good, you don't need gimmicks to get people to play a good game.

i like em

dlc dont count for platinum trophies on ps3 as long as u get the ones that came when u bought th eoriginal game i have a platinum in bf bc2 and im 68%  or something like that lol

what if they re-release classic  psone games with trophies?

I dont generally care for achievements, but i gotta admit that i do tend to go for the tough ones, although i dont ever bother with the Collection ones (e.g. AC Flags etc).

Many games achievements are mediocre, now give us more difficult ones and better rewards for doing so!

Trophies are good.

Personally I never bother with them, but I can understand how it may be a positive for hardcore gamers, wanting to get as much out of their game, or purchase, as possible.

When the achievement system came out I was addicted to increasing my gamer score on Xbox Live.  Now that its been out for a while, I'm in the boat where "if I play the game and get it, great, if not, no biggie".

I think you should be rewarded properly for doing something hard in a game.

doing a speed run for to get a trophy in a modern game. a little window saying you have got a new achievement? what can i do with that? nothing! it's pointless.

the older method for example in goldeneye and perfect dark on the n64. Complete a level within a certain time frame and you unlocked a cheat for the single player campaign. - This was awesome! some of the cheats were great fun and really gave the single player campaign a prolonged life span.

getting a virtual trophy is shit. getting something you can use isn't. My mates and I would use the sheer amount of cheats available as bragging rights. some were very very hard to get. much harder than 90% of today's normal trophies.

Rareware were way ahead of the curve in most things. including "achievements".

I think trophy-hunting, achievements are a great thing for a hardcore player but it might push a casual gamer away if it's to hard for them.

Some people play games just for trophy-hunting, yet another way of turning videogames into sports..

I personally don't care about achivements, trophy-hunting or sports  :-D

I think the best way to handle trophies/achievements has already been done years ago.

Most people don't realize this, but the first game to have a trophy system before Xbox Live introduced achievements is Star Ocean 3.  Not only did you get bragging rights, but you also got rewarded for accomplishing difficult tasks.

I think the trophy systems that are in place now should offer rewards for getting difficult trophies, making it worth the effort to get them.  How cool would it be if by getting enough trophies, you could redeem them for stuff like themes, DLC, etc.?

I like it.

It not so much about the total gamerscore but more about individual games. I like to see how i fare against my friends on a game i know we are all into, especially with some of the harder to complete achievements.

Also it's good to see when people are lying to you about in game completion etc. This was always something as a kid was hard to convince other than actually going to someones house to see them do it or vice-versa.

On the flip side, some games set achievements to be simply gained by just completing the game. Assassins creed 2 i got nearly all achievements by just finishing it and mopped up the last few with relative ease. (although getting the feathers WAS an achievement in itself)

If implemented correctly achievements are excellent and genuinely can increase longevity of a game. Personally i think games should give you a (small (avatar item?)) reward for completing certain achievements more often.

I have mixed feelings about it. I absolutely love it at some instances, but find myself distracted for countless hours from direct gameplay in others. I do find myself addicted to trophies/achievements. At the same time, I remember the days when those weren't needed for a game to be "fun". I replayed them countless times without trophies/achievements.

When they were first introduced this generation, I did feel it to be an addition to the fun. Now I kind of feel it to be a requirement. I don't know if that's because I enjoy it so much, or if it's because the games wouldn't be very enjoyable without them. I wonder...

Achievements don't give anybody bragging rights that they didn't already have. If you beat a game on hard you don't need an extra bit of text to clarify that. You can tell people yourself if you need them to know so badly. Although in the end I doubt anybody really cares about what achievements others have.

You forgot the Sly Cooper Series, you can get the platinum trophies easy there and I like the xbox trophy system.

SInce I got my xbox, and playstation, I have loved the trophy, and achievement system. They just keep me playing.

I forgot to say some games require a network pass in order to earn their platinum trophy and if you've bought the game preowned or borrowed it from a friend,you'll need to pay for another access code to platinum the game.

You're giving out incorrect info, no platinum trophy requires paid dlc trophies.

i enjoy the funny names of a lot of the trophies, but it really waters it down when so many are just there for simply completing a level. it's more fun to look at a trophy collection when more of them are interesting or take skill to have earned!

I used to take a great interest in earning Trophies/Achievements in order to maximize my Trophy collection/Gamerscore, but I lost most of that interest fairly quickly. I usually only bother going after TRophies that are actually fun to earn. I have quite a number of games that are essentially 'Platinum ready', I simply haven't shot for the Trophy yet due to the fact that the remaing Trophies wouldn't be much fun for me to collect. Take Assassins' Creed 2 for example. The only Trophies I have left to earn are a few combat-related ones and the Trophies for collecting every feather in the game and walking through each city while wearing a specific cape. But I haven't felt any motivation to earn those because jumping around gathering feathers isn't my idea of fun. I believe it would be difficult to provide an absolute answer as to whether or not gamers care about Trophies and/or Achievements - the gaming community seems to be divided on the subject by a great deal.

Whenever I look at someone's profile, I'm typically more curious about which Trophies/Achievements they have, as opposed to how many they have.An Xbox 360 player might have 4000 Gamerscore, but that could have been earned by simply playing a lot of games without completing their respective Achievement collections, or by playing four, very easy, very simple children's titles. By comparison there could be another player with only 2000 Gamerscore who had earned their score by completing two challenging games, such as Dark Souls and CoD: WaW (the latter of which is seen as being one of the hardest 1000/1000/Platinum's to acquire).

With regards to the Resident Evil 5 example, I believe the Platinum Trophy is awarded for earning all *original* Trophies i.e. not DLC ones. The 72% Platinum's were likely 100%'s to begin with before the completion rate reverted to 72% after the player updated the game. In the case of RE5 Gold Edition, the DLC Trophies came with the game, but aren't required for the Platinum because they' were originally from the DLC, therefore making it possible to earn a Platinum with only 72% of the game's Trophy set completed. As far as I'm aware the same applies to the 360 version of RE5 - the player only needs to earn the original achievements in order to have their game registered under the '1000/1000' list.

From my own expierience I'm going to say that the stance on Achievements among the PC gaming community is vastly different from that of the console community. Steam Achievements don't count towards much - they don't add up to some grand total like a player's Gamerscore or Triophy Level, and are only visible when another player views your Stats for the game those Achievements pertain to (or when they view the friends tab under the 'New' Community section).