No, honestly, achievements are stupid. I've been saying this since the day I heard about them. Playing a game to 100% completion to earn concept art (I personally love looking at concept art) makes a heck of a lot more sense than some crappy post-its telling you what you did.

[IMG]http://www.animationtrip.com/store/features/books/images/conceptart/im_step.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://l.yimg.com/download2.games.yahoo.com/games/buzz2/content/p/3/462423/928517_20060509_screen004.jpg[/IMG]


... Nothing that can't be found on Google.

Achievements aren't rewards, anyway. They're more ways of saying 'hey, ever thought of doing this?'. In games like Crackdown and Guitar Hero II, they had me doing things I otherwise wouldn't have thought of.

Achievements over concept art any day of the week. Typically whenever I unlock stuff like concept art or pages out of a comic book or other collectibles I just ignore them. Half the time I have no idea what I did to even get them.

[quote=The X;738056]
... Nothing that can't be found on Google.

Achievements aren't rewards, anyway. They're more ways of saying 'hey, ever thought of doing this?'. In games like Crackdown and Guitar Hero II, they had me doing things I otherwise wouldn't have thought of.

You can't find the Metroid Prime 1 or 2 concept art anywhere, not the entire set. If they weren't in the game in the first place they wouldn't even be on the internet as very few were shown as promotional pieces and no art books were released with the game. Honestly, I've tried. Those two pieces of concept art are pretty awful, by the way. I like to look at stuff like this:

[IMG]http://medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/screenshot_133672.jpg[/IMG]

I don't care for pointlessly jumping through hoops doing things I wouldn't normally want to do. When it comes to videogames if there's no reward available then there's no effort from me, doing pointless crap is more often than not very unrewarding. An insight into the game's development and seeing the artist's original visions in a totally unrestrained form is very rewarding for me.

[quote=Speedfreak]When it comes to videogames if there's no reward available then there's no effort from me

You could say that about anything you do in a game. Personally, I can take a lot of reward out of doing things for achievements, even if I don't get bunch of generic sketches. Climbing the highest tower in Crackdown and scoping the view was an awesome feeling, and trying to achieve five stars on every song in Guitar Hero led me to discover a whole bunch of songs I'd have ignored if they hadn't been part of the achievement. I can't see how a bunch of concept art is superior to an entire system of getting more out of games.

SORRY METROID FANS THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT XBOX AGAIN SORRY

[quote=The X;738191]You could say that about anything you do in a game. Personally, I can take a lot of reward out of doing things for achievements, even if I don't get bunch of generic sketches. Climbing the highest tower in Crackdown and scoping the view was an awesome feeling, and trying to achieve five stars on every song in Guitar Hero led me to discover a whole bunch of songs I'd have ignored if they hadn't been part of the achievement. I can't see how a bunch of concept art is superior to an entire system of getting more out of games.

SORRY METROID FANS THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT XBOX AGAIN SORRY

Oh come on, generic?

Climbing to the highest place in a video game is something I would actually do without an e-penis score being involved. Some shite little note with a patronising score attached would actually cheapen it. Most of the rest I couldn't give a damn about. I don't need a new fangled system to get the most out of my games, I had a fucking Nintendo 64. Droughts + expensive games + low pocket money sort of taught me the way.

unlocking fan art has never been a big incentive to me for doing random crap tha I normally wouldn't do. If there isn't a special item or cutscene that gets unlocked, then I usually skip or not do it. I guess I need e-penis score points...

I don't even collect them for the e-penis factor. Not sure what it is, but it works and I try to get as many as I can, even though if it was with concept art I wouldn't bother. Take The Darkness for example. Many achievements were unlocked at the same time as concept art and pages of comics... yet, I didn't give a **** about the art. I just wanted to collect achievements.

And there are a lot of people who dig the system of Achievements. It's not about the size of our ego, it's about the lengths we go through to play a game for all it's worth. We have a ****ing image when it comes to 360 gaming. It's incredibly awesome and I think 360 gamers who don't go for Achievements are in the minority.

Vast minority from what I've seen.

[quote=Big Boss;738296][FONT=trebuchet ms][COLOR=yellowgreen]What?[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=trebuchet ms][COLOR=yellowgreen]
[/COLOR][/FONT]I don't know. He's either completely making s[COLOR=lightgreen]h[/COLOR]it up or he's taking something I said that he never understood in the first place completely out of context.
[FONT=trebuchet ms][COLOR=yellowgreen]
[/COLOR][/FONT][quote=Big Boss;738296][FONT=trebuchet ms][COLOR=yellowgreen] Then again, I've always preferred Achievements. It is no secret of man's (and woman's) age-old desire for self-expression and need to display their accomplishments. Microsoft merely tapped into an obvious gamer want that had, until then, generally been poorly satisfied by games.
[/COLOR][/FONT]
Not all of us are so attention-starved. Some of us are grounded in reality enough to know that the vast majority of the stuff you can do in videogames is f[COLOR=lightgreen]u[/COLOR]cking easy and just takes time, which if anything is proof of how insanely bored you are. I for one know exactly how many people give a s[COLOR=lightgreen]h[/COLOR]it about how long it'll take me to rack up 20 headshots in Halo 3: zero.

Anything truly worthy of attention like, I don't know, actually completing Ikaruga would make sense. But the majority of them are completely uninteresting.

I don't know, maybe you enjoy being awarded "Good Effort" stickers like some special needs kid in kindergarten. But when I put effort into a game I like when it realises "Hey, you're obviously really into this game, wanna check out some behind-the-scenes stuff?".

For the record I didn't even know concept art was unlockable in the Prime games, I beat the game on hard because I actually wanted to. They weren't dangling them on a f[COLOR=lightgreen]u[/COLOR]cking string trying to coax me into doing something I didn't want to do. Achievements are just that, you already know they're there, you're told of a pointless reward before doing something you wouldn't even do in the first d[COLOR=lightgreen]a[/COLOR]mn place. Who the f[COLOR=lightgreen]u[/COLOR]ck would be proud of that?

[/rant]

Speedy, your gripe is basically the use of Achievements, their application. Not so much the core of the system itself. If they had more meaningful achievements, you wouldn't be agitated by it, in other words, no? In a way, it's directly similar to the people that pick at the Wii for its new remote and how Third-party developers are having a hard time adjusting to it, so their games are clunky. The achievement system is clunky, but it could shape up easily as time progresses; the same goes for the Wii remote.

It's more the gamerscore and the amount of achievements in each game. The concept that every game is equal in difficulty and should have an equal amount of points is stupid.

A message telling your friends you completed a game is fair enough. But a message that tells your friends you rolled into every tree in Zelda? Honestly, who actually cares? A scoring system that actually compiles all this pointless data? Asinine.

I see what you're getting at with the Wiimote comparison, but it's not entirely accurate. If a developer can't integrate every feature of the Wii into their game they can just drop it. But every 360 game has to have achievements. I don't see that situation getting better.

I enjoy achievements. It brings me back to games for some extra activities, which adds great replay value. I probably would have never touched Dead Rising again after I defeated it unless there were those extra achievements to earn, which I had a pleasure getting.

I'm still impressed with the "Seriously..." Achievement in Gears. Seriously, 10,000 kills? Christ. Comparing important stats like that is cool. :cool:

i like achievemnents because after youve beaten the normal storyline, you still have a reason to beat it. its not rly the epenis factor that keeps me going, its just that i wanna be able to say that i compleatly beat that game in all aspects. However i do wish they would have more contest (with better results) like the old spice one a coupla monts back.

That only happened to me once, in Table Tennis. What other games have it?

Rainbow, GRAW2, Dead Rising I think... and I'm not sure what else.

Outpost Kaloki X and Cloning Clyde.

I understand and agree with a lot of what you're saying. You made a great post but that last comment just makes you look like a ****ing moron. Not only is it an incorrect assumption about me, but it's incorrent in of itself. Nintendo does their own form of achievements, and I couldn't care less.

Why would I want a profile detailing my game playing habits when all it will lead to is people, despite being intelligent and mature as yourself, assuming I'm a fanboy?

I don't see the appeal of them at all. I'd rather have something tangible as a reward than a message that tells everyone what I did. What started this whole ridiculous arguement was the fact that I said it was cool that Metroid had both, both being obviously better than just the one. Apparantly that opinion isn't good enough for the fanboys around here.

lol?

And concept art isn't tangible. It's just as worthless as achievements. Actually, it's worse. And that was also originally part of this argument. And thus, we come full circle.

Not really. I prefer concept art to achievements. There is nothing to argue about there, it's my preference. Fanboys got ****ed off that I don't like the system Microsoft put together and started trying to prove that they are better. It just goes to show how blindly they'll defend Microsoft because the original topic in question, Metroid, has both. I just care about the concept art.

And how is it not tangible? It's a real thing, that's what tangible means.

Concept art isn't anymore real or tangible than virtual points. Plus, the way Metroid has "achievements" set up is pretty poor. In fact, I barely even realised what you were talking about at first. It's really not a case of defending the system as wondering why you're so against it. I mean, the first sentence in this thread is "achievements are stupid."

Um. Concept art is something real drawn by an actual person. In it's original form it's an actual physical thing. I don't understand why that isn't real. Virtual points that don't hold any meaning and aren't useful for anything don't seem a decent reward to me.

If you remember, I just said I prefer concept art to achievements. You guys had a problem with that and demanded an explanation, I said I just think they're stupid as a reward. Isn't that enough?

Hey check it out guys, my girlfriend just showed me some of her concept sketches for a dress she's working on at art school! It's an actual physical thing! Who cares about accomplishing new things, we have sketches a person made! Using real pencils and paper!

Anyone can make concept art. It's not fun or rewarding to go through piles of sketches of what an area in a game could have looked like.

[quote=Vampiro V. Empire;739515]Um. Achievements are awards created by an actual person to serve the same purpose except they seem to hold more meaning and be more popular with gamers these days than concept art. My point is, the concept art you unlock isn't physical nor is it tangible. It's still a virtual reward and nothing more. It really really isn't that useful and it isn't a decent reward. It's a sketch. A sketch the artists decided not to use for one reason or another. No thanks.

I like looking at pretty pictures rather than boosting a meaningless number. Do I really have to keep justifying this?

I dunno, Speedy, as it's been said before, it's not even really about the number because some games are really easy to score in. It's mostly about comparing games and stuff. I can understand your love for concept art and other guts-like game content, just like I'm sure you can understand the appeal for others when it comes to Achievements.

It's not a problem. I enjoy arguing about opinions. Especially when one is hideously wrong, like Speedy's.

Uh, yeah, I think both Speedy and I realise that, thanks. But this is a games forum. We're discussing things game related. In which cares nearly everything comes down to personal taste and opinions.

Notice Speedy and I are the main people discussing this? drr drr drr

Learn to read then, buddy.

You responded to my post. You said there's no right or wrong when I said speedy was wrong. I said I know. You said you didn't say my name which means it wasn't directed towards me, which it was because it was in response to my post whether you say "vamp" or not.

I think I can read.

You're off a post, but whatever you want to believe.

I'm not even talking about X's post. Just from mine in response to yours and from there on.

[quote=S

I think achievements are pretty cool. The number 1 reason I like achievements is because it adds replay value to the game. Like someone stated earlier, it makes you do stuff in the game that you probably would have never done before. Yeah, sure the numbers may be completely pointless, but they're fun to get. It shows you what you have accomplished in a game and it's fun to compare what you have with other people. I would also take achievements over concept art almost any day.

[quote=Fate;739564][COLOR=skyblue]I dunno, Speedy, as it's been said before, it's not even really about the number because some games are really easy to score in. It's mostly about comparing games and stuff. I can understand your love for concept art and other guts-like game content, just like I'm sure you can understand the appeal for others when it comes to Achievements.[/COLOR]

I totally understand what achievments is supposed to represent, I just don't think it does it properly. I think talking about games the old-fashioned way is a lot more interesting and fun, so I guess I think VGC > Xbox Live achievements?
I also understand why people like how it adds longevity to games, but I personally can't get past the fact that it's basically a cop-out from a game design point of view. It's just so easy to set a simple goal like that with a basic reward. And if there's one thing I can't stand it's those clever but cheap reward systems in games, like levelling up purely for the sake of seeing numbers get bigger. Once I realise that the designer really hasn't done anything clever at all it stops being fun for me.

[quote=Speedfreak;740627]I also understand why people like how it adds longevity to games, but I personally can't get past the fact that it's basically a cop-out from a game design point of view. It's just so easy to set a simple goal like that with a basic reward. And if there's one thing I can't stand it's those clever but cheap reward systems in games, like levelling up purely for the sake of seeing numbers get bigger. Once I realise that the designer really hasn't done anything clever at all it stops being fun for me.

Take a look at the Crackdown achievements. It's almost entirely composed of stuff most people wouldn't normally do. Pretty creative - 10G for harpooning 5+ people to your car, for instance. Once I'd finished the main storyline in Crackdown, any revisits to it would have been standard-fair treasure hunts. With achievements, I'm trying to get my SUV on top of a skyscraper so I can attempt a triple-front flip.

... Shame my 360 has mauled the disc beyond recognition, though. :(

And even all of that I would've never really bothered with it unless Willeth and I worked on them together.

That's why it doesn't appeal to me, I wouldn't normally do it. To me it's like bananas being packaged with sweetener to make eating the peel more enjoyable. I'd rather just have another fruit, or maybe pictures of the banana as a seed.

Except it was ****ing fun to get them :rolleyes:

Seriously, 1) Crackdown is meant to be played with two people. 2) How would I have thought of getting over 100 explosions in a short amount of time? I wouldn't've so I would've never done it originally. Turns out, the process of doing it, however, with a friend, was an enjoyable experience.

[quote=Vampiro V. Empire;740660]2) How would I have thought of getting over 100 explosions in a short amount of time? I wouldn't've so I would've never done it originally.

I done it on my own. Took at least six tons of barrels, but I set off a beautiful chain reaction. :cool:

I don't understand Speedfreak - you don't want to do unusual things in games, but you preach innovation and new ideas? Achievements are purely optional, and I'm sure if they'd been around when I was a kid who could only afford a single game every three or four months, I'd have been hella less bored.

*cough*xbox*cough*

[quote=The X;740672]I done it on my own. Took at least six tons of barrels, but I set off a beautiful chain reaction. :cool:

I don't understand Speedfreak - you don't want to do unusual things in games, but you preach innovation and new ideas? Achievements are purely optional, and I'm sure if they'd been around when I was a kid who could only afford a single game every three or four months, I'd have been hella less bored.

What does my liking innovation have to do with my not liking of messing around with games I don't want to mess around with?

But let's say I did do something really bizarre in a game that took a lot of skill and unexpectedly got an achievement for it. It would be sorta cool that the game recognised it, but it would also suck to know that the designers already thought of that and that everyone else was probably going to do it. As far as making games last longer, I really don't have that problem anymore. If there's more enjoyment to be had in a game I'll find it, I don't need a checklist either.

Get it through your heads, achievements just don't fit my playstyle. I'd rather be given a difficult task with extra production details at the end as a reward then a little guide that tells me how I should play my own damn game.

Achievements are optional. You don't have to do them, you know?

You say that like I've been saying every game with achievements is a bad game.

You've been saying all achievements are bad though. Though I think this:

Why is that a problem?

Sounds like your basing achievements on games you don't even want to "mess around with" which is kinda the point. You're likely not going to care about a game's achievements if, you know, you don't care about the game.