there is this achievement in portal 2 where you meet up with (badguy to avoid spoilers). the badguy says : this is the part where i kill you your companion says: this is the part where he kills you text flashes on screen: chapter #: this is the part where he kills you achievement unlocked: this is the part where he kills you
+Kahila I It was a while ago, but i think i was more going 'oh crap' and looking for a way out then real plugging into the humor. I think i spent less then a second on that platform the first time i got on it before i saw the way out and did it. . . .hmmm, the game got me to act like Chell would. did not notice that before.
+MasterGhostf but that logic doesn't add up, you do know that there exists these midgets we tend to call children,and that we put them into schools and not out into society from day one. because there is this thing called "hey im new here, no i don't know everything that's been going on since day one of time itself, so please stop spoiling all the endings before i get a chance to read them" and that is the thing you should consider, before blatantly saying that just because you read it a long time ago, you got the right to spoil it for others. ^^
I love it when unavoidable achievements are included in a game. They allow excellent statistics on how many people played how far into a game. You only need, say, five or so, but it's really eye opening just how few people complete most games.
...I actually hand't considered that. Interesting idea. Probably put one at the end of the tutorial, mid game, and beating the game. I mean game companies take metrics of everything, why not Achievements and see what's up.
As a potential buyer I can also look at those stats and get an idea of how good a game is by how many people got to the end chapter (as compared to other good games).
My brother and I are achievement hunters. We love hunting down every last achievement the game has to offer and we won't stop playing games till we get them all. A few years ago however I noticed that by doing this I was more focused upon what achievements were coming up in this level than what was going on in the level, what my character was going through. So I set up a rule for myself where I am not allowed to look at the achievements list until I beat the game. Once I beat the game If I liked it enough I will go back through the game and hunt for achievements. I enjoy a lot more games now because of it.
android272 wow, that happenned to me too. I was totally obsessed with trophies, but now the only trophy that I go for the first time playing is the "beat the game on hard mode" kind
That is why I look with pity at regular archievement hunters. You're not treasure hunters. You're people with PTSD like behaviour who have to wash their hands 10 times each hour.
I love that achievement of borderlands, where you can kill a very low level enemy by the damage he receives when bouncing on top of him. The achievement is labled "My brother is an italian plumber"
I never really had a problem with type A achievements, or as I've come to call them, 'Mission Markers.' They're actually a useful way to see how far you've gotten in a game. For example, while playing Life Is Strange (my GOTY 2015 so far), I used the Steam achievements to track how much of the story I had left to play through. That way, I can tell which games I'm only an hour away from beating, and which ones I need to invest some more time in.
Franklin Falco I would have one at the beginning called: ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: You actually payed money for this? (Replace payed with download if it's a F2P game)
I know the video is old, but there is a good reason for "Unavoidable Archievements" for the developers, especially on steam and similiar platforms. You can easily see how players play your game. If you see that 75% played to level 3 but only 30% played to level 5, then you know there is something that makes players lose interest. I can remember these thoughts from the Factorio developers, who want to do exactly this, as the game is complicated and they want to know which parts cause players to stop to smoothen it out if possible. So, I think they are not necessary.
I demand that the cat appears in at least every episode from now on. I say he would be a good member of the team due to his kitty powers and the addition of a cats perspective on video games.
For me, if the achievements are memorable, it makes unavoidables more palatable, optionals more rewarding, and inspiring achievements that much better overall. Take "The Part Where He Kills You" from Portal 2, for instance. You get this when you reach chapter 8 of the game, at the part where he kills you. It's an unavoidable achievement, so you would think it's just another one of those pointless conditioning "rewards", but if you look at how it's presented, with GLaDOS's dialog, Wheatly's dialog, the chapter title, and THEN the achievement, it really reinforces the fact that you have really reached the part where he kills you.
VestedUTuber Actually I was going to mention that myself. Though more-so because I thought it was a really funny joke. So I would have to say the unavoidable achievements can have some merit if used cleverly.
that depends on the drop rate of gold. if you can get 10 billion gold or more in a hour, not so bad (though why any game would overinflate the value of their currency that bad I don't know)
This episode missed something about unavoidable achievements that at leave Valve has openly stated. Which is that they can use them to take statistics about player progress into their games. If they plop an achievement at the end of each chapter they can track every single player who plays. Then they can see if there is a "cliff" of players who for some reason just....stop playing at a particular chapter and try to figure out why. Maybe they can even patch something to make is easier to push people through it to get people to come back. Yeah some studios can use them just lazily as filler, but others can use them to study player behavior to improve future projects and I think you guys totally missed that.
if developers have achievements in their game, chances are they already have metrics showing stats like those and much, much more. (which weapons are used most, why do people die the most, on which levels, what's the most popular skill, etc.) I really don't think Valve needs the achievements to know what happens in their games. it complements the metrics but definitely not the reason they have them
My favourite achievement was one I didn't expect or had heard of the first time I played through...Arkham Asylum. You enter in Joker's last trap and are greeted with wall to wall thugs on either side of you. At least 20. Except they're not attacking you, just cheering your arrival. But because you're Batman (BECAUSE I'M BATMAN!), you beat the living hell out of all them. You proudly stand over their unconscious bodies when suddenly... PING! Achievement unlocked: Party Pooper. I was laughing so hard from this that I had to pause the game. It was a very well-timed joke.
***** One of the Achievements I remember the most was in Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires. It was partly due to the Achievement itself and on the other half due to the character I was using. I played the game on Chaos Mode with no Extra Points spend to unlock Items, weapons, mounts or gold for myself, started as free officer with a character of the peasant build (the weakest starter you can have). I played over 2 weeks to get through this, defending my Kingdom and forced myself to not switch the character, so i would not gain any advantage of already powered up characters. The first Achievement this Character gained me was Beyond Invincible, when I managed to defeat every main officer of the game without losing to them once! And that is very hard with a low stat character on Chaos Mode. The last one made me bounce up and cheer in glory when I beat the entire game. it was the Achievement "King of Chaos", for beating the game on Chaos Mode. I beat it, but I beat it with a character so weak in stats that each soldier on the battlefield could've easily killed you in 4-5 hits. x3 That is how victory should feel. Like you truly have worked for it!
Michael Aldridge My favourite achievement was the Hyper Hexagonist achievement for Super Hexagon, you had to survive the hardest level for 60 seconds and when I got the achievement, only 0.2% of the entire population of earth also had it, making me very lucky.
Personally I quite like unavoidable achievements at act breaks or other significant story beats to serve as a sort of souvenir so when you're scrolling through your list of achievements you can be reminded of these great moments in games you've loved
The best type of achievement is one you are not expecting and makes you laugh. For example in portal 2 when you get the achievement for throwing your self in the pit on wheatly's request is amusing.
I jumped in the pit cos Wheatley helped me at the beginning of the game but when I got the trophy cos I was playing PS3 I was like screw you Wheatley prepare to die
An achievement i find inspiring is "on the old road, we found redemption" its a steam achievement for completing the last mission in Darkest Dungeon with both Dismas and Reynauld, (your starting characters) and i've never been able to get it, and yet the achievement speaks to me, something about it makes me hope someday i can have those 2 make it there, hell if they did they deserve redemption, at least
I've yet to get that achievement in all my hours of playing darkest dungeon (I am terrible at games) but I wholeheartedly agree with you. Also, for inspiring achievements: a shout-out to "A Line, Crossed" and "A Line, Held" in Spec Ops: The Line for either rewarding you for organically discovering the choice to fire your gun in the air to scare the mob away *OR* to make you reflect on your decision to mow them down in the name of base, pointless revenge for the death of a friend (that was actually _your_ fault), you terrible, terrible person.
I remember putting in Modern Warfare 3 for the first time and I got an achievement for starting the game. Something told me "Wow, I shouldn't be playing this then."
That's a money-grubbing achievement. Once you got the first for 5, you now have 995 to go to max out, and if you don't play again.... Well that's 995 empty achieve points. Just like releasing 500GS in 20 some-odd achievements which require you to fork over an additional $40 to earn. h*a*c*k*halo*c*o*u*g*h
AnarchistMetalhead Minecraft's achievements are a little different to most achievements. They're designed to help guide you through the game, and alert you to things that you might not have known existed. Taking Inventory is the only achievement the game tells you about before you've done it. You see it pop up, you press E, it says you got it. So you think 'Huh. Achievements?' You pause, look at the achievements page, and see the one about making a crafting table from planks. It doesn't do MUCH to alleviate Minecraft's biggest, 8ft-wide flaw, but it's at least something, and they had something different in mind when designing it. If you'd like though, you can easily think of the later ones like Overkill or On A Rail, or Sniper Duel to be the 'real' achievements.
That Achievement is actually for starting the campaign. I was thinking it was just something to try to get some more people to check out the campaign, I had a couple friends a whole back that didn't ANY campaign Achievements in Halo Four, and only had multiplayer ones.
Actually for games on steam achievements like "did mission #2" are great for measuring how many players actually played more than 5 minutes of the game. There are tons of people who haven't even gotten the "started the game" achievement on certain games.
My favorite two achievements are “Albert Hall” from a Sniper Elite 4 DLC which you get for killing Hitler with a shot to the family jewels. And “All Out Of Bubblegum” from Generation Zero gotten by killing 80 runner type machine’s the game is set in the 80’s so half of the achievements are references to films of the time.
I love EU4, and I love the achievements they have. Some are simple but large, like having a million manpower pool for your army or making several hundred gold a month. But others are insane, like having to triple the size of France in under 100 years or controlling huge amounts of trade with only a couple actual provinces. These are achievements that require a deep understanding of the game mechanics, and being able to exploit every possible feature perfectly. They can be so challenging as to put Dark Souls II to shame.
+Fakjbf But some of them are so easy like win a war or get a royal marriage or take a provence. You should be able to do these within the first 10 years of the game if you're new. If your experience it will be the first 5.
EUIV has fantastic achievements. The problem is that in the global achievement stats it seems that most players haven't touched the game, only around 25% of players have "'Till death do us apart"
I find "Owners" to be a little lienient... Dogs have owners. However from my 15 years of experience with over 10 cats in my lifetime, I now know this. Cats have staff.
Left 4 Dead 2's "Guardin' Gnome" Achievement where you had to carry the garden gnome through the entire dark carnival campaign, and Halo 4's "This is my rifle, this is my gun" achievement where you had to beat the 3rd level without dropping your Assault Rifle take the cake for most fun and challenging achievements.
My god, "This is my rifle, this is my gun" that was a challenge indeed but it also taught a lot about the game and forced me to rethink playing style. Two great games!
I think the best achievement I'd ever gotten was the bleep bloop achievement in dishwasher vampire smile. At the very least it's the most memorable one I can think of off the top of my head. to get it first you had to find an easter egg, then destroy the creators of the game, and finally go through some mini achievements wearing the award. Stuff like "smashed a box" or "watched the credits". small things that would only be worth 5g each on average but sandwiched together with some impressive prerequisites to make it feel extraordinary and challenging.
Unavoidable achievment can be pretty handy to show global player progress. It's like when i look at global Portal 2 achievments, I always wonder WHY IN THE WORLD ONLY 43 FREAKING PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT THE GODDAMN GAME BOTHERED TO FINISH IT. Wow.
One of the most memorable achievements I can remember is "Little Rocket Man" in Half-Life 2: Episode 2; where you had to carry the garden gnome through nearly the entire game. While some would view this as tedious, I turned it into a little game, even getting emotionally attached to my little buddy, similar to Portal's combanion cube. The worst achievements are the ones that just lengthen gameplay and waste time. These are the collectibles, ranks, wins, and games in MP, or most transparent, play for X hours.
Achievements for doing trivial things like starting up the game... yeah I understand that's stupid. I actually hear of a game that outright mocked this by giving you one... worth 1 gamerscore and with the description "Now finish what you started!" Beating the game gave you an achevement worth 9g. (Most players hate having their gamerscore not be divisible by 10) I still kind of like story progress related achievements, since they give you some way to track your progress and mean that those going for only the bare minimum in the game still get something. If you aren't careful with them though you could end up spoiling how long or short your game is. And no, making them hidden won't fix this. It's pretty easy to deduce the number of chapters from the number of question marks near "chapter clear" achievements. I agree the best achievements are ones that get you to try something you didn't know was possible, or experience the game in a different way. Portal has a lot of these. The achievements I find the most annoying are playtime-related ones (since that's really no show of skill at all) and ones only available through multiplayer. I admit I'm kind of biased since I don't do a lot of multiplayer gaming, but no game keeps its servers up forever, and there's nothing more annoying to an avid completionist than picking up an old game and realising you can't 100% it. What's worse, there are games these days that give you achievements for PRE ORDERING THE GAME, which is probably the most infuriating kind ever. Not one of those who knew about the game in the short time before it was released? Too bad, no 100% completion for you!
Now I'm curious, I need to know which game that is. Dishonoured is another example of good achievements. Play through the game without being seen at all? Go through the game collecting (almost) every penny you can find and then never spend it? Go through the game without upgrading any of your magic (super fun by the way). Collect all the hidden paintings? Not to say it doesn't have its share of meh achievements or even unreasonably hard ones, but its another good example. I haven't heard of any games specifically that offer an achievement for pre-ordering (special missions or weapons, sure) but I really hope that doesn't become a thing.
The game that had an achievement for pre ordering was Age of Empire 2 HD Edition on Steam. Then again, that game's pretty much impossible to get all the actievements since there are some that involve playing THOUSANDS of multiplayer matches.
BigKlingy Those achievements are actually a result of services like Microsoft requiring that games have achievements. So the developers who don't really care about achievements may put in something silly like "back-flip 5 times in a row". I'm not kidding about that one.
***** I'm not really a fan of "Use X move X amount to times" achievements either, unless the move is something that takes a lot of skill to pull off. (like certain types of reversals or counters in fighting games) That's why I'm probably not going to go for 100% in a lot of Tales series games, since most of their achievements are like this, and some of them are just boring to do. (Teepo switching hundreds of times in Xillia is just standing in one place holding the left stick down)
BigKlingy Not all games need to have achievements. th-cam.com/video/Elg8wFf96s0/w-d-xo.html And while achievements are a good system, the fact that Microsft requires it doesn't help. Terraria on PC doesn't have any achievement, you can play for thousands of hours, and you will never get an achievement. However, on the Xbox, it does have achievements, granted, I think the console version was handled by a different studio.
+natnew32 Given, Minecraft has no tutorial. Minecraft does not tell you how to open it, nor does it tell you why it's significant, but it's the building block of the whole game, so. *shrugs* The achievements in Minecraft aren't so much achievements to me as a tutorial replacement to put you on the right track despite the fact you don't know what you're doing if you're a first time player.
+natnew32 Postal 1: Playing the first level... Doesnt seem to end - keep playing... running around the map like a lunatic... finally looking up a solution to this "bug" online and press the button necessary to advance... get a mocking achievement for finally realizing how to continue... uninstall game because "the controls were horrible anyway"
It's cool you guys are a part of Child's Play. I remember being able to play Wipeout 64 while waiting for tests to be done to see why I was having seizures. To say the least, other factors on top of the seizures made that part of my life extremely stressful, difficult, and hard to get through. Having something as an escape during that time was amazing, made the hospital environment more relaxed, and was something amazing and unforgettable to my third-grade mind. Again, it's great to know you guys are supporting such a cool cause. I know from my experience that it's appreciated by many kids.
it's ok, the xbox one has achievements for its youtube app, in particular one named after the konami code for watching 5 hours worth of gaming videos i'm not kidding, that's a thing
That was one of my favorites... Though my absolute favorite has to be "Little Rocket Man". Instead of placing a restriction on my combat skills -fun and engaging though that was to work around- I now have to work out various ways to escort an physics prop past helicopters, ambushes and more. Despite the annoyance of wedging the gnome in that one place in my car several times, it was worth it just to see if I could do this thing. Send a gnome into space. Felt like a true Achievement, too.
There is ONE unavoidable achievement that has all the right to be in a game, and that game is called Double Dragon Neon. "Skullmageddon's Curse" It adds exactly 1 GS point, and the only way to even it out is to finish the game, which gives you the "Victory!" achievement, which gives you 19 GS. It's a beautiful, clever way to make you play through the whole game, and I love it. It's also a massive "screw you" towards all those people who are completely obssesed with achievements.
The Vidmaster achievements from Halo 3 and ODST are my favourite achievements of all time. You can be proud of getting those, it marks you as a very skilled player.
Unavoidable Achievement: Anyone who has played Dark Souls 2 knows which achievement I am thinking of. The one that nobody, and I meant it, NOBODY that played the game doesn't have. Even if you never made it to Majula, you might already have it.
My favorite achievement was in Portal 2. It was unavoidable, but it had comedic value, in that you were seeing a message repeated excessively, in addition to receiving a reward for reaching a rather morbid objective. It really just nudged the experience over the deep end into borderline insanity. GLaDOS tells you "Well, this is the part where he kills us." Followed by Wheatley saying "Hello! This is the part where I kill you!" Which is coupled with a title appearing on screen, stating "Chapter 9: The Part Where He Kills You" What really kicks it, though, is when you hear that iconic sound and see the message pop up at the bottom of the screen: "Achievement Unlocked: The Part Where He Kills You". I laughed so hard on my first playthrough. Comedy by absurdity, it's really hard to beat.
I think unavoidable achievements can be used really well, especially as a form of humor. Achievements like Assassin Creed III's "How D'ya Like Them Apples?" or Portal 2's "The Part Where He Kills You (this is that part)" and "Lunacy (that just happened)" really improved my experience of the games. They are like a form of commentary that let me know that others share my experiences. I don't have many gamer friends, so it's nice to be able to share a joke like that with the developers and other players even if no one else I know has actually played the game.
I love EC. Every single episode has so much thought and effort put into it. My prayers are going to them. Here's hoping they stay safe and sound IRL, so that they can keep bringing us this goodness for many years to come.^_^
Or you can be The Stanley Parable. "Oh, please. Are you really just doing this for the achievement? Click a door five times? Is that all that you think an achievement is worth? No, no, no, no, no. I can't just give these merits away for such little effort. A measly five clicks? Now suppose you were to click the door 20 times. I would say that's the kind of effort that warrants recognition!"
I think Europa Universalis IV, and to a slightly lesser extent all the other Paradox grand strategy titles, is a great example of how to do achievements. EU is a sandbox game that will never say 'you win,' only 'time's up' and 'you died.' The whole game is about finding something interesting to do in that sandbox. So the devs loaded it with great achievements that give you some goal to achieve. The game does have 'you tried' achievements like take one province or get married, but it also has some really interesting ones that encourage alt-history: as a minor power in India reforge the British Empire, including Britain herself. Then there's Laughingstock, take the three provinces of Hehe, Haha, and Lolland. Hundreds of hours and I'm still doing achievement runs.
"It's like giving a kid a gold star for showing up to school" Perfect Attendance award. That is EXACTLY what you're thinking. And I am SO glad that other people agree that it's the stupidest, most pointless award ever given.
The most memorable trophy I ever got was in the first Dead Space. It was that one where you had to manually fire the ship's turrets at the asteroid field and do so with more than 75% of the ship's hull intact. It was a nightmare to get, but once I did, that trophy also led me to getting my first platinum. By God, was it worth it.
My personal favorite achievement was "Test of Faith" for Mirror's Edge, beat the entire game without using guns. It was hard as heck but when I won, when the end credits rolled and the music played I felt a true sense of accomplishment, a sense of achievement I had not felt in a long while. That is what made it my best achievement, because that is what it truly felt like.This isn't the only achievement to make me feel this way, but it was the first to do so.
2:45 That got me bad.I actually stopped the video to go look for it on google, and spent half an hour only to come back to see that he was trolling. Good job
gameification has already taken place for me with vacuuming. I bought a roomba with a remote control on it and I chase and play with my cats with it. Still cant get either of them to ride on top of it though. I'm missing out on that TH-cam gold.
Thank you for the episode idea, Mr Kitty! :P I know a few people who try to rack up as many achievements/trophies as they can. Either way, achievements are great to add to your experience at best, or have no effect on game play at worst. You like it, great. You don't, it's easy to ignore.
I love you guys. You make videos that are funny, informative, interesting, and help me out with animation/drawing (I'm really new, so seeing Allison's slides help me find out what's wrong with mine)! I subscribed, and you guys deserve every sub you have, and will receive in the future.
Achievements are good if they add another layer of challenge, they're just a way of showing people that you actually managed to do something difficult.
My favorite inspiring achievement is hands-down the "Scavenger Hunt" achievement in Bioshock Infinite. It requires you to play through the game on 1999 mode (the hardest difficulty that can have you bashing your head into a wall at certain points) without EVER buying anything from the dollar bill, the store for health, ammo, etc. While this might seem like a simple optional achievement, it completely changes the pace of the game as you have to carefully search every nook and cranny the game gives you for supplies while also being conservative during firefights making Elizabeth's contributions to the game play ever more potent.
Here's my thing about achievements. When looking to buy a game or taking one home for the first time, I look through the achievement list. Most of the time it'll tell you how the developers expect and want you to play their game and can be a really good way to get a feel for a game before you play it or a way you can divert from their play.
The stealth achievement in Deus Ex: Human Revolution made it something of a puzzle, in terms of working out what you could get away with doing quietly, and what stats to take to further silent killing, and added to the replay of it for me.
Tales of Vesperia had cool achievments. They were mostly all secret achievements and the game quickly taught you that they were unlocked by beating each boss intelligently (or correctly). It encouraged the player to think though the boss battles and because of that discover the secret complexity of the game.
My two favorite achievements are Full lockdown on Black Ops 2 and Dr. Miserable on Payday 2. Both achievements hold their challenge in purposefully failing a task, with Full Lockdown having you let Brutus disable all of your perks, buildables and the box. And Dr. Miserable has you fail to send in the right fusion reactor 11 times and having the last reactor be the fully fuctioning one. Both are really fun as they have you complete tasks hat you wouldn't ever do during normal play.
Few years late to the party but I think having at least one achievement right at the beginning of the game is good for letting you know they, you know, exist and another one as a basic completion quest for telling how many people have actually played through to the end could also be useful.
Achievements are also pretty useful for smaller studios to highlight some of the content in their game that they didn't have the time to fully reward in game. We did this for our game Westerado: Double Barreled, which is an open-world game with non-linear narratives. Early on we wanted to have some sort of exploration web to let players know what more could be done. But after trying to map it out for ourselves to keep track of content we realised it was going to be very hard to present and implement. Instead achievements came to the rescue allowing us to highlight all the different ways situations can be resolved, and to get players to think using the tools unique to Westerado (ie. drawing your gun in conversation, and the non-linear interaction with different characters and groups).
One of the most satisfying achievements I've got, althoug it didn't make me proud, was the good listener achievement in Portal 2. The game says something like, you took such a spectacularly silly and fun decision, that you have to be rewarded for it.
I like how some achievements in sequels nod at the first game, like how dying in Dark Souls 2 the fitrst time gives you the "This is Dark Souls" achievment, a nod at what made the first one so popular
My favourite achievements were those of The Binding of Issac, they fell into the last two categories nicely, and sometimes you'd stumble on one by accident or luck, look it up and realise there's another four or five you can go for in the same style! I think rogue-like games really need to have inspirational achievements, because of the replay value they create. Steam's function of showing the percentage of players who've gotten each achievement really helps me too, looking at something like "beat the game without taking damage" (real Binding of Issac achievement) seems impossible, but when you see that 0.1% of players have done it, you feel like you can join the elite club too
Dunno if you mentioned this in a later episode, but there's also a set of "Tutorial" achievements. They're sorta like the "Unavoidable" ones but are actually avoidable provided the user never notice the actions needed to get them. The most obvious game that uses this is Team Fortress 2, where a lot of the achievements, the really easy ones, tells you to do something trivially easy, but not something you'd naturally stumble upon (like, kill x number of enemies with a shotgun as the heavy while your minigun is out of ammo, which teaches the player to, instead of running away in a panic when they run out of ammo, pull out their shotgun to continue fighting). The reason I say they're avoidable is that even though theoretically anyone playing the game as the developers intended will get these, there are at times where if you just button mash, you'll never encounter them. I love playing as the heavy but I've never actually used the shotgun, even when out of minigun ammo, since I can usually memorize where ammo drops are (I only ever used the shotgun to specifically get that achievement).
And you'll notice that that's what the video described as an "Unavoidable" achievement, yet it's still done in such a way that it's memorable and adds entertainment value (if only because of the name). In other words, Portal is so good it doesn't have to follow the rules.
I feel achievement lists, especially ones with a lot of "go finish the story" achievements, allow the developers and publishers to better gauge what the player is completing in their games. There was a great article in Game Informer a few months back that showed the percentage of players who had certain achievements in various games --things the number of people who bought and finished Lego Marvel, allowing one of sort of judge when the player became bored with the game. Meanwhile, Call of Duty's charts showed how very little its core demographic cared about the single player component, many barely getting by the first level. I suppose I would argue that the achievements are not just for the player as they are feedback for the developers. True, some are thought provoking, but even that can tell the developer what the player cared about in the game: whether or not without any help they would appreciate the irony of taking a picture of Sander Cohen tells us how much the player was enjoying the story and really getting involved with it.
I read somewhere that the unavoidable achievement system can be used by the developer to monitor what parts of the game people enjoyed the most by looking at what trophies/achievements have been obtained. For example, say you make an RPG with two distinct types of dungeons, say cloud fortresses and hellish catacombs. If you get an achievement for every dungeon you complete, it will be easy to see which type of dungeon people enjoyed the most.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but one use of unavoidable achievements is as a tutorial, kinda. Minecraft does this to an extent. It's not the best way to make a tutorial and it's not that fantastic as an achievement, but I do think it's a valid reason for using unavoidable achievements.
My favorite achievement is "Party Pooper" from Arkham Asylum. I never would've got that one if I hadn't accidentally attacked one of the mooks outside jokers lair just before entering for the final confrontation. I got a good chuckle out of it when I realized what happened.
I find the entire achievement set of FTL to be very well done. It provides you with a lot of side goals that really redefine the processes you go through while playing it. They have an in game reward behind them, but not something essential. They're slight variations on the ships you own and really aren't required for anything. Yes, I will go through my first five sectors only fighting by boarding ships. It's an interesting playstyle change.
One thing i know From Software did was use achievements you get for b asic boss slaying / exploration in order to gather data on where people stopped playing Dark Souls: common stopping points for people attempting to get into the series were The Gargoyles, Upper Blighttown, and Sen's Fortress. the designers used the knowledge of common brick walls in the game to design later titles so that players would be better equipped / inclined to play all the way through without losing the series' reputation for challenge. Designers can also track which secret areas / treasures were found by which portions of the population. notice in later games the concept of summons and NPC summons are better communicated to the player, since the Gargoyles were supposed to teach players about summoning so they could make a 2v1 fight a 2v2 fight, but DS1 didn't exactly communicate the mechanics of summoning very well. Upper Blighttown is an area where new players need a lot of item / auxillary gear support to survive, but since you can't warp, the merchant who lets you stock up on the things you may need is very far away from the blighttown bonfires, and the enemies themselves don't drop antidote moss so you can't farm your supplies without trecking all they way back through the depths and the undead burg. Sen's I think is just a natural break point because it's where the series' difficulty increases again. However, DS2 gives you the ability to bounce around between four different paths, which means that you can shift gears instead of getting stonewalled by a zone you just can't beat. you can warp all over the place in later titles, which has its own detriments but means that forgetting to buy certain supplies won't force you to walk too and from major zones all the time, and the concept of summoning is much better communicated to players.
I'm slightly disappointed you didn't talk about the other kind of inspirational achievements- those that are a true feat to achieve. For example, I remember when I was playing Warhammer: total war, and I got an achievement by the name of 'The stuff of legend' after achieving an impossible defense. It felt amazing to be able to achieve, and would probably be my favorite achievement to date.
On thing in defense of "unavoidable achievents" is - they can be visible to others. For one - if there is a line of achievenets for completing chapters of your storyline - you can easily see what percentage of players made it to the final chapter, or where your friends are stuck... This "involuntary communication" is somewhat helpful in molding your community... I don't know how to phrase it... just look at how having visible raid progress help getting into raid in WOW.
Павел Жданов Good point, but I will say I feel it takes me out of the game somewhat when every climax is punctuated with the same noise. Luckily Steam's achievements are silent and I believe they can be turned off.
Had Babits I once played a PC game (a point-and-click adventure) that waited to give you achievements of this sort until you got control of your character back in the following scene. That game's particular achievement noise would have been even more annoying in cutscenes than the Xbox one.
Павел Жданов I wanted to leave a comment on the topic of the "unavoidable achievement". This achievement is not there for the player, its there for the developer. It lets the developer know when players dropped off. If 95% of people got the first "unavoidable achievement" when playing the main story, and then only 55% got the second one, thats a huge drop off and is worth investigating to see why people stopped playing between those two points. Did something break the person's immersion? Was the boss, or a specific enemy in that area simply too hard? Was that part of the game particularily buggy that some players are running into and needs to be patched? Was there not enough depth? Was the game horribly balanced? I imagine that alot of this you may not necessarily experience at the first or second achievement, but these types of achievements can be useful.
I like milestone achievements. Mostly because they act a lot like chapter markers in books. A moment when a movement of the game ends and a new one will begin, at least in more narrative focused ones.
one of the great achievements is in hexyz force where they give you a equipment or an item that you want to get without letting you acidentaly breaking the game
My favorite achievement of all time was "Little Rocket Man" from Half Life 2: Episode 2. Getting it required one to replay the entire game carrying a small statue of a garden gnome, eventually placing it in a rocket ship at the end of the last level. This completely changed how one had to play the game, as the player now had the contesting needs to stay alive and to make sure not to lose the gnome.
The one achievement I do like that you pretty much always have to get is the one in Portal 2, the part where he kills you one. It just adds to the emphasis of the situation.
2:45 HD Remake of Deus Ex you say? There IS Dues Ex: Revision (requires Deus Ex: GOTY to be installed in the same library to play though) released October 2015, a community-made mod & overhaul of the original game updating it to DirectX 9.0c and run on a Vista or newer system with HD textures & 3D models.
Not all inevitable achievements are bad. They can tell things like progression in the game. Like in Terraria. There is achievement for milestones like unlocking hardmode, obtaining wings etc. They are inevitable, if you progress in the game far enaugh, but they add to experience, when you get achievement for crossing milestone for the first time. You can also say that some class achievements in Team Fortress 2 are practicaly inevitable, after you play the class long enaugh. But it still adds that feel of looking at your achievements and see that you have unlocked so much for medic, while almost none for sniper.
I like the idea of achievements rewarding you for doing something awesome on the game - like preforming a 70-hit combo using all four characters on Tales of Vesperia, or killing a dragon in Skyrim using nothing but Frostbolt, the weakest ice-based spell. Achievements that actually challenge the gamer are also very inspiring - like finishing Kingdom Hearts 2: Final MIx on Unknown difficulty and unknown difficuly on lvl 1 - stuff that is REALLY hard to do, and can only be achieved by a minority.
Sharing in the spirit of the video, my favorite "inspirational achievement" is "The One Free Bullet" from Half Life uhh... 2 I think. Now I'm the opposite of a Valve fanboy, but for me it took what was a mostly vanilla (albeit well crafted) FPS and turned it into a uniquely fun experience.
The best kind of achivements are ones that act as tracking tokens. something that allows you to carry things over between playthroughs or games. Mass Effect style. checking yor system for certain achvements etc
I think that the best achievement system I've seen in a game is Mark of the Ninja, where achievements are directly built into the game. No I'm not talking about the Steam achievements, the ones actually in the game, such as make it a certain distance without being detected and kill a certain number of enemies with a chandelier, which not only make you feel accomplished doing something special and actually challenging, but unlock whole new ways to play for completing them!
The only achievement I've ever done that made me feel like a champ was doing Black Ops' Kowloon mission on Veteran while only dual-wielding. Two achievements done, but a great personal that made me BOOYA to my TV.
I know a lot of my comments recently on these videos are about half-life or doom but A good example of a "Alternate Playstyle" achievement is in half-life 2, Ravenhall is the first AREA you get to use the gravity gun, and the game show's you: "Hey, you can actualy KILL things with this believe it or not!" by showing you right away that zombies can be killed with saws and explosives quite easily, but BECAUSE it's pretty much the tutoriel level for the gravity gun it has so many objects to kill things WITH the gravity gun, that you could BEAT it without even FIRING, which the creators took ADVANTAGE of, because there's an achievement that you can get on the console edition that you get by going through Ravenhall without firing a single gun.
Dishonored did "Inspiring achievements" really well. It took me about a week of consistent play to get Ghost, Faceless, Clean Hands and the other pacifist/ninja style achievements. And it was just as fun as blasting people into doors.
From time to time it's really tempting to get all of the achievements, or at least it was like that before I got rarest achievement in the game called "Mount&Blade Warband". It has SO MANY of them it's extremely difficult to get all of them in less than 2000 hours. This game taught me though that sometimes it's better not to try catching 'em all.
there is this achievement in portal 2 where you meet up with (badguy to avoid spoilers).
the badguy says : this is the part where i kill you
your companion says: this is the part where he kills you
text flashes on screen: chapter #: this is the part where he kills you
achievement unlocked: this is the part where he kills you
trym197 Portal 2 is like 5+ years old.
ZipplyZane My point was the person was trying to avoid spoilers. Portal2 has been out for a very long time.
+trym197 This is the use of an Unavoidable Achievment for comedy, I'm pretty sure most of the people playing laughed when the entire scene played out
+Kahila I It was a while ago, but i think i was more going 'oh crap' and looking for a way out then real plugging into the humor. I think i spent less then a second on that platform the first time i got on it before i saw the way out and did it. . . .hmmm, the game got me to act like Chell would. did not notice that before.
+MasterGhostf but that logic doesn't add up, you do know that there exists these midgets we tend to call children,and that we put them into schools and not out into society from day one.
because there is this thing called "hey im new here, no i don't know everything that's been going on since day one of time itself, so please stop spoiling all the endings before i get a chance to read them"
and that is the thing you should consider, before blatantly saying that just because you read it a long time ago, you got the right to spoil it for others.
^^
I love it when unavoidable achievements are included in a game. They allow excellent statistics on how many people played how far into a game. You only need, say, five or so, but it's really eye opening just how few people complete most games.
...I actually hand't considered that. Interesting idea. Probably put one at the end of the tutorial, mid game, and beating the game. I mean game companies take metrics of everything, why not Achievements and see what's up.
GrandCommander13 Or how many people use cheats, it was eye opening to see how many of my friends used cheats in Saints Row right out of the gate.
Portal 2's achievement "The Part Where He Kills You" is an amazing unavoidable achievement that was delivered expertly.
As a potential buyer I can also look at those stats and get an idea of how good a game is by how many people got to the end chapter (as compared to other good games).
Michael Woelk That would be a nice buying strategy, only for games your not sure about though.
My brother and I are achievement hunters. We love hunting down every last achievement the game has to offer and we won't stop playing games till we get them all. A few years ago however I noticed that by doing this I was more focused upon what achievements were coming up in this level than what was going on in the level, what my character was going through. So I set up a rule for myself where I am not allowed to look at the achievements list until I beat the game. Once I beat the game If I liked it enough I will go back through the game and hunt for achievements. I enjoy a lot more games now because of it.
android272 wow, that happenned to me too. I was totally obsessed with trophies, but now the only trophy that I go for the first time playing is the "beat the game on hard mode" kind
That is why I look with pity at regular archievement hunters.
You're not treasure hunters. You're people with PTSD like behaviour who have to wash their hands 10 times each hour.
I love that achievement of borderlands, where you can kill a very low level enemy by the damage he receives when bouncing on top of him. The achievement is labled "My brother is an italian plumber"
I never really had a problem with type A achievements, or as I've come to call them, 'Mission Markers.' They're actually a useful way to see how far you've gotten in a game. For example, while playing Life Is Strange (my GOTY 2015 so far), I used the Steam achievements to track how much of the story I had left to play through. That way, I can tell which games I'm only an hour away from beating, and which ones I need to invest some more time in.
Deadpool:
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: "First steps!"
Deadpool: "Oh it's one of THOSE types of games."
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: "One of those types of games!"
Franklin Falco I would have one at the beginning called: ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: You actually payed money for this? (Replace payed with
download if it's a F2P game)
i dream too be a Dev and i might use that
We need more episodes with the cat. That feline knows his questions. ^,...,^
Car goes brrr
There's a cat now. Happy?
Yes!!! More car!!!!
I know the video is old, but there is a good reason for "Unavoidable Archievements" for the developers, especially on steam and similiar platforms. You can easily see how players play your game. If you see that 75% played to level 3 but only 30% played to level 5, then you know there is something that makes players lose interest. I can remember these thoughts from the Factorio developers, who want to do exactly this, as the game is complicated and they want to know which parts cause players to stop to smoothen it out if possible. So, I think they are not necessary.
+DerTolleIgel There are far more subtle methods to achieve that.
+RasRas342 good pun
+DerTolleIgel That is very possible, but it can be done in other ways. Namely being metrics taken from the game.
extra credits... i expected an achievement icon saying completionist at 4:52, you missed a good opportunity.
you dont really need an archivement system for observations of that sort.
I demand that the cat appears in at least every episode from now on. I say he would be a good member of the team due to his kitty powers and the addition of a cats perspective on video games.
Yes
MOAR CATS!
Well we have Zoey now
I CARRIED A GARDEN GNOME THROUGH THE ENTIRETY OF HALF LIFE TWO: EPISODE TWO.
and glados apreciates your actions a lot
And now you can carry a garden gnome through the entirety of Half Life Alyx. Or two gnomes, if you prefer
For me, if the achievements are memorable, it makes unavoidables more palatable, optionals more rewarding, and inspiring achievements that much better overall.
Take "The Part Where He Kills You" from Portal 2, for instance. You get this when you reach chapter 8 of the game, at the part where he kills you. It's an unavoidable achievement, so you would think it's just another one of those pointless conditioning "rewards", but if you look at how it's presented, with GLaDOS's dialog, Wheatly's dialog, the chapter title, and THEN the achievement, it really reinforces the fact that you have really reached the part where he kills you.
VestedUTuber lol i love that part!
VestedUTuber Actually I was going to mention that myself. Though more-so because I thought it was a really funny joke. So I would have to say the unavoidable achievements can have some merit if used cleverly.
+VestedUTuber The soundtrack title for this part, too, is called "The Part Where He Kills You".
+VestedUTuber Portal and Portal 2 may have unavoidable achievements, but they are well integrated, which is the real key to any good achievement imo.
P0rtal's achievement when you destroy the companion cube is also unavoidable, but it's an achievement that makes you wonder.
;)
"Get 8 septillion gold." That would be the most troll move a dev could do.
that depends on the drop rate of gold. if you can get 10 billion gold or more in a hour, not so bad (though why any game would overinflate the value of their currency that bad I don't know)
This episode missed something about unavoidable achievements that at leave Valve has openly stated. Which is that they can use them to take statistics about player progress into their games. If they plop an achievement at the end of each chapter they can track every single player who plays. Then they can see if there is a "cliff" of players who for some reason just....stop playing at a particular chapter and try to figure out why.
Maybe they can even patch something to make is easier to push people through it to get people to come back.
Yeah some studios can use them just lazily as filler, but others can use them to study player behavior to improve future projects and I think you guys totally missed that.
Hm. That makes a lot of sense, actually.
if developers have achievements in their game, chances are they already have metrics showing stats like those and much, much more. (which weapons are used most, why do people die the most, on which levels, what's the most popular skill, etc.)
I really don't think Valve needs the achievements to know what happens in their games. it complements the metrics but definitely not the reason they have them
My favourite achievement was one I didn't expect or had heard of the first time I played through...Arkham Asylum.
You enter in Joker's last trap and are greeted with wall to wall thugs on either side of you. At least 20. Except they're not attacking you, just cheering your arrival.
But because you're Batman (BECAUSE I'M BATMAN!), you beat the living hell out of all them. You proudly stand over their unconscious bodies when suddenly...
PING! Achievement unlocked: Party Pooper.
I was laughing so hard from this that I had to pause the game. It was a very well-timed joke.
That achievement was featured on the "top ten achievements for heartless bastards" list.
*****
One of the Achievements I remember the most was in Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires. It was partly due to the Achievement itself and on the other half due to the character I was using.
I played the game on Chaos Mode with no Extra Points spend to unlock Items, weapons, mounts or gold for myself, started as free officer with a character of the peasant build (the weakest starter you can have). I played over 2 weeks to get through this, defending my Kingdom and forced myself to not switch the character, so i would not gain any advantage of already powered up characters. The first Achievement this Character gained me was Beyond Invincible, when I managed to defeat every main officer of the game without losing to them once! And that is very hard with a low stat character on Chaos Mode. The last one made me bounce up and cheer in glory when I beat the entire game. it was the Achievement "King of Chaos", for beating the game on Chaos Mode. I beat it, but I beat it with a character so weak in stats that each soldier on the battlefield could've easily killed you in 4-5 hits. x3
That is how victory should feel. Like you truly have worked for it!
Michael Aldridge My favourite achievement was the Hyper Hexagonist achievement for Super Hexagon, you had to survive the hardest level for 60 seconds and when I got the achievement, only 0.2% of the entire population of earth also had it, making me very lucky.
***** gahhh, I hate it when the "Show More" is bugged and it cuts off at "You proudly stand over their"
Charles Preston O god that one, still working on it and I have played for 9 bloody hours just to survive for 60 bloody seconds!
Personally I quite like unavoidable achievements at act breaks or other significant story beats to serve as a sort of souvenir so when you're scrolling through your list of achievements you can be reminded of these great moments in games you've loved
The best type of achievement is one you are not expecting and makes you laugh. For example in portal 2 when you get the achievement for throwing your self in the pit on wheatly's request is amusing.
I jumped in the pit cos Wheatley helped me at the beginning of the game but when I got the trophy cos I was playing PS3 I was like screw you Wheatley prepare to die
I was sad that no achievement happened when I entered the death option
"Fratricide" anyone?
Fratricide was an ok acheivement, I mean it was one that I wanted to avoid, but it was not optional.
Optional or not, I didn't see it coming when it came upon me first, so it still got me. Just my personal experience.
An achievement i find inspiring is "on the old road, we found redemption" its a steam achievement for completing the last mission in Darkest Dungeon with both Dismas and Reynauld, (your starting characters) and i've never been able to get it, and yet the achievement speaks to me, something about it makes me hope someday i can have those 2 make it there, hell if they did they deserve redemption, at least
I've yet to get that achievement in all my hours of playing darkest dungeon (I am terrible at games) but I wholeheartedly agree with you.
Also, for inspiring achievements: a shout-out to "A Line, Crossed" and "A Line, Held" in Spec Ops: The Line for either rewarding you for organically discovering the choice to fire your gun in the air to scare the mob away *OR* to make you reflect on your decision to mow them down in the name of base, pointless revenge for the death of a friend (that was actually _your_ fault), you terrible, terrible person.
some of my favourite achievements are in civ 5 where the achievements are basically just a ton of references and in-jokes. it tickles my funny bone
I was the Choson-won for awhile.
blastyowrath snow I'm always the chosen one
No, I am holier than thou.
I loved how in the Ghostbusters game all of the achievement names were quotes from the movie
I remember putting in Modern Warfare 3 for the first time and I got an achievement for starting the game. Something told me "Wow, I shouldn't be playing this then."
That's a money-grubbing achievement. Once you got the first for 5, you now have 995 to go to max out, and if you don't play again.... Well that's 995 empty achieve points.
Just like releasing 500GS in 20 some-odd achievements which require you to fork over an additional $40 to earn. h*a*c*k*halo*c*o*u*g*h
reminds me of getting an achievement for pressing he inventory key in minecraft
AnarchistMetalhead
Minecraft's achievements are a little different to most achievements. They're designed to help guide you through the game, and alert you to things that you might not have known existed.
Taking Inventory is the only achievement the game tells you about before you've done it. You see it pop up, you press E, it says you got it. So you think 'Huh. Achievements?' You pause, look at the achievements page, and see the one about making a crafting table from planks.
It doesn't do MUCH to alleviate Minecraft's biggest, 8ft-wide flaw, but it's at least something, and they had something different in mind when designing it.
If you'd like though, you can easily think of the later ones like Overkill or On A Rail, or Sniper Duel to be the 'real' achievements.
That Achievement is actually for starting the campaign. I was thinking it was just something to try to get some more people to check out the campaign, I had a couple friends a whole back that didn't ANY campaign Achievements in Halo Four, and only had multiplayer ones.
Actually for games on steam achievements like "did mission #2" are great for measuring how many players actually played more than 5 minutes of the game. There are tons of people who haven't even gotten the "started the game" achievement on certain games.
My favorite two achievements are “Albert Hall” from a Sniper Elite 4 DLC which you get for killing Hitler with a shot to the family jewels. And “All Out Of Bubblegum” from Generation Zero gotten by killing 80 runner type machine’s the game is set in the 80’s so half of the achievements are references to films of the time.
I love EU4, and I love the achievements they have. Some are simple but large, like having a million manpower pool for your army or making several hundred gold a month. But others are insane, like having to triple the size of France in under 100 years or controlling huge amounts of trade with only a couple actual provinces. These are achievements that require a deep understanding of the game mechanics, and being able to exploit every possible feature perfectly. They can be so challenging as to put Dark Souls II to shame.
+Fakjbf But some of them are so easy like win a war or get a royal marriage or take a provence. You should be able to do these within the first 10 years of the game if you're new. If your experience it will be the first 5.
EUIV has fantastic achievements. The problem is that in the global achievement stats it seems that most players haven't touched the game, only around 25% of players have "'Till death do us apart"
John Meyer that may also be because not everyone plays on Ironman mode and some people have mods
I find "Owners" to be a little lienient...
Dogs have owners.
However from my 15 years of experience with over 10 cats in my lifetime, I now know this.
Cats have staff.
*claps several times, slowly, but not in an offensive way, but in a congratulating way*
Now, hooman, fetch me my catnip.
Left 4 Dead 2's "Guardin' Gnome" Achievement where you had to carry the garden gnome through the entire dark carnival campaign, and Halo 4's "This is my rifle, this is my gun" achievement where you had to beat the 3rd level without dropping your Assault Rifle take the cake for most fun and challenging achievements.
My god, "This is my rifle, this is my gun" that was a challenge indeed but it also taught a lot about the game and forced me to rethink playing style. Two great games!
I loved the l4d2 achievement, mostly cause it was really fun cooperating with friends to pull it off
Funny how that achievement started as an achievement for HL2: Episode Two, and carried onto L4D2.
I think the best achievement I'd ever gotten was the bleep bloop achievement in dishwasher vampire smile. At the very least it's the most memorable one I can think of off the top of my head. to get it first you had to find an easter egg, then destroy the creators of the game, and finally go through some mini achievements wearing the award. Stuff like "smashed a box" or "watched the credits". small things that would only be worth 5g each on average but sandwiched together with some impressive prerequisites to make it feel extraordinary and challenging.
No achievement for watching the credits. I am disappoint.
Hearing the unfitting music during the credits of Watch Dogs wasn't worth the gamerscore o_e
I would have rather skipped
+Jack Thompson Yeah! After all, this show is called Extra "Credits"!
+Jack Thompson Yeah! After all, this show is called Extra "Credits"!
Jack Thompson disappointed*
Achievement Unlocked
Be corrected
Dani Paunov
Achievement Unlocked: Be "that guy"
Unavoidable achievment can be pretty handy to show global player progress. It's like when i look at global Portal 2 achievments, I always wonder WHY IN THE WORLD ONLY 43 FREAKING PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT THE GODDAMN GAME BOTHERED TO FINISH IT. Wow.
One of the most memorable achievements I can remember is "Little Rocket Man" in Half-Life 2: Episode 2; where you had to carry the garden gnome through nearly the entire game. While some would view this as tedious, I turned it into a little game, even getting emotionally attached to my little buddy, similar to Portal's combanion cube.
The worst achievements are the ones that just lengthen gameplay and waste time. These are the collectibles, ranks, wins, and games in MP, or most transparent, play for X hours.
Achievements for doing trivial things like starting up the game... yeah I understand that's stupid. I actually hear of a game that outright mocked this by giving you one... worth 1 gamerscore and with the description "Now finish what you started!" Beating the game gave you an achevement worth 9g. (Most players hate having their gamerscore not be divisible by 10)
I still kind of like story progress related achievements, since they give you some way to track your progress and mean that those going for only the bare minimum in the game still get something. If you aren't careful with them though you could end up spoiling how long or short your game is. And no, making them hidden won't fix this. It's pretty easy to deduce the number of chapters from the number of question marks near "chapter clear" achievements.
I agree the best achievements are ones that get you to try something you didn't know was possible, or experience the game in a different way. Portal has a lot of these.
The achievements I find the most annoying are playtime-related ones (since that's really no show of skill at all) and ones only available through multiplayer. I admit I'm kind of biased since I don't do a lot of multiplayer gaming, but no game keeps its servers up forever, and there's nothing more annoying to an avid completionist than picking up an old game and realising you can't 100% it. What's worse, there are games these days that give you achievements for PRE ORDERING THE GAME, which is probably the most infuriating kind ever. Not one of those who knew about the game in the short time before it was released? Too bad, no 100% completion for you!
Now I'm curious, I need to know which game that is. Dishonoured is another example of good achievements. Play through the game without being seen at all? Go through the game collecting (almost) every penny you can find and then never spend it? Go through the game without upgrading any of your magic (super fun by the way). Collect all the hidden paintings? Not to say it doesn't have its share of meh achievements or even unreasonably hard ones, but its another good example.
I haven't heard of any games specifically that offer an achievement for pre-ordering (special missions or weapons, sure) but I really hope that doesn't become a thing.
The game that had an achievement for pre ordering was Age of Empire 2 HD Edition on Steam. Then again, that game's pretty much impossible to get all the actievements since there are some that involve playing THOUSANDS of multiplayer matches.
BigKlingy Those achievements are actually a result of services like Microsoft requiring that games have achievements. So the developers who don't really care about achievements may put in something silly like "back-flip 5 times in a row". I'm not kidding about that one.
***** I'm not really a fan of "Use X move X amount to times" achievements either, unless the move is something that takes a lot of skill to pull off. (like certain types of reversals or counters in fighting games) That's why I'm probably not going to go for 100% in a lot of Tales series games, since most of their achievements are like this, and some of them are just boring to do. (Teepo switching hundreds of times in Xillia is just standing in one place holding the left stick down)
BigKlingy Not all games need to have achievements. th-cam.com/video/Elg8wFf96s0/w-d-xo.html
And while achievements are a good system, the fact that Microsft requires it doesn't help. Terraria on PC doesn't have any achievement, you can play for thousands of hours, and you will never get an achievement. However, on the Xbox, it does have achievements, granted, I think the console version was handled by a different studio.
Minecraft: "Taking Inventory" (open the inventory) (literally press one button once you start actually playing)
+natnew32 Given, Minecraft has no tutorial. Minecraft does not tell you how to open it, nor does it tell you why it's significant, but it's the building block of the whole game, so. *shrugs* The achievements in Minecraft aren't so much achievements to me as a tutorial replacement to put you on the right track despite the fact you don't know what you're doing if you're a first time player.
+natnew32 Postal 1: Playing the first level... Doesnt seem to end - keep playing... running around the map like a lunatic... finally looking up a solution to this "bug" online and press the button necessary to advance... get a mocking achievement for finally realizing how to continue... uninstall game because "the controls were horrible anyway"
ACTUALLY, thats optional. You can use a bench in a village for crafting and viewing your inventory.
+Koopinator What about taking off armor? you can put it on with right click, but how you take it off?
by dying, of course!
It's cool you guys are a part of Child's Play. I remember being able to play Wipeout 64 while waiting for tests to be done to see why I was having seizures. To say the least, other factors on top of the seizures made that part of my life extremely stressful, difficult, and hard to get through. Having something as an escape during that time was amazing, made the hospital environment more relaxed, and was something amazing and unforgettable to my third-grade mind. Again, it's great to know you guys are supporting such a cool cause. I know from my experience that it's appreciated by many kids.
What, no achievement for watching past the end credits?
it's ok, the xbox one has achievements for its youtube app, in particular one named after the konami code for watching 5 hours worth of gaming videos
i'm not kidding, that's a thing
I believe that means they created a Negative Possibility Space in their video, which they did not fill.
WAY TO PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH, EC!
jpheitman Yep, my thought exactly!
Achievement unlocked: comment on an achievement video on TH-cam. 500 G.
my favorite achievement was from CS:S. It was called "Good Shepherd" You get it for rescuing every single hostage by yourself in 1 round.
That was one of my favorites... Though my absolute favorite has to be "Little Rocket Man". Instead of placing a restriction on my combat skills -fun and engaging though that was to work around- I now have to work out various ways to escort an physics prop past helicopters, ambushes and more.
Despite the annoyance of wedging the gnome in that one place in my car several times, it was worth it just to see if I could do this thing. Send a gnome into space. Felt like a true Achievement, too.
There is ONE unavoidable achievement that has all the right to be in a game, and that game is called Double Dragon Neon.
"Skullmageddon's Curse"
It adds exactly 1 GS point, and the only way to even it out is to finish the game, which gives you the "Victory!" achievement, which gives you 19 GS.
It's a beautiful, clever way to make you play through the whole game, and I love it.
It's also a massive "screw you" towards all those people who are completely obssesed with achievements.
+Adrenaline Rush "Victory!" Also fits quite perfectly in that ending. The timing was so perfect I just bust out laughing.
The Vidmaster achievements from Halo 3 and ODST are my favourite achievements of all time. You can be proud of getting those, it marks you as a very skilled player.
"What mysterious, dark figure has emerged from the shadows to determine the fate of this weeks episode?"
It was Walpole.
Unavoidable Achievement: Anyone who has played Dark Souls 2 knows which achievement I am thinking of. The one that nobody, and I meant it, NOBODY that played the game doesn't have. Even if you never made it to Majula, you might already have it.
Volvary "This is Dark Souls", yeah- that one right?
Volvary "This is Dark Souls", yeah- that one right?
IHate GooglePlus Yep.
Volvary
The achievement every Dark Souls 2 player has..
I got that achievement before I met the firekeepers XD
My favorite achievement was in Portal 2. It was unavoidable, but it had comedic value, in that you were seeing a message repeated excessively, in addition to receiving a reward for reaching a rather morbid objective. It really just nudged the experience over the deep end into borderline insanity.
GLaDOS tells you "Well, this is the part where he kills us."
Followed by Wheatley saying "Hello! This is the part where I kill you!"
Which is coupled with a title appearing on screen, stating "Chapter 9: The Part Where He Kills You"
What really kicks it, though, is when you hear that iconic sound and see the message pop up at the bottom of the screen: "Achievement Unlocked: The Part Where He Kills You".
I laughed so hard on my first playthrough. Comedy by absurdity, it's really hard to beat.
I think unavoidable achievements can be used really well, especially as a form of humor. Achievements like Assassin Creed III's "How D'ya Like Them Apples?" or Portal 2's "The Part Where He Kills You (this is that part)" and "Lunacy (that just happened)" really improved my experience of the games. They are like a form of commentary that let me know that others share my experiences. I don't have many gamer friends, so it's nice to be able to share a joke like that with the developers and other players even if no one else I know has actually played the game.
I love EC. Every single episode has so much thought and effort put into it.
My prayers are going to them. Here's hoping they stay safe and sound IRL, so that they can keep bringing us this goodness for many years to come.^_^
Or you can be The Stanley Parable.
"Oh, please. Are you really just doing this for the achievement? Click a door five times? Is that all that you think an achievement is worth? No, no, no, no, no. I can't just give these merits away for such little effort. A measly five clicks? Now suppose you were to click the door 20 times. I would say that's the kind of effort that warrants recognition!"
I think Europa Universalis IV, and to a slightly lesser extent all the other Paradox grand strategy titles, is a great example of how to do achievements. EU is a sandbox game that will never say 'you win,' only 'time's up' and 'you died.' The whole game is about finding something interesting to do in that sandbox. So the devs loaded it with great achievements that give you some goal to achieve. The game does have 'you tried' achievements like take one province or get married, but it also has some really interesting ones that encourage alt-history: as a minor power in India reforge the British Empire, including Britain herself. Then there's Laughingstock, take the three provinces of Hehe, Haha, and Lolland.
Hundreds of hours and I'm still doing achievement runs.
This is honestly a very interesting channel.. please post more! I can binge these all day
"It's like giving a kid a gold star for showing up to school"
Perfect Attendance award. That is EXACTLY what you're thinking. And I am SO glad that other people agree that it's the stupidest, most pointless award ever given.
The most memorable trophy I ever got was in the first Dead Space. It was that one where you had to manually fire the ship's turrets at the asteroid field and do so with more than 75% of the ship's hull intact. It was a nightmare to get, but once I did, that trophy also led me to getting my first platinum. By God, was it worth it.
My personal favorite achievement was "Test of Faith" for Mirror's Edge, beat the entire game without using guns. It was hard as heck but when I won, when the end credits rolled and the music played I felt a true sense of accomplishment, a sense of achievement I had not felt in a long while. That is what made it my best achievement, because that is what it truly felt like.This isn't the only achievement to make me feel this way, but it was the first to do so.
2:45 That got me bad.I actually stopped the video to go look for it on google, and spent half an hour only to come back to see that he was trolling. Good job
"This sort of thing makes Sparrow Cry" Thunk.
That was probably the funniest thing I've seen all night!
gameification has already taken place for me with vacuuming. I bought a roomba with a remote control on it and I chase and play with my cats with it. Still cant get either of them to ride on top of it though. I'm missing out on that TH-cam gold.
Thank you for the episode idea, Mr Kitty! :P I know a few people who try to rack up as many achievements/trophies as they can. Either way, achievements are great to add to your experience at best, or have no effect on game play at worst. You like it, great. You don't, it's easy to ignore.
the best achievement i have seen is in dishonored telling you to play all stealth and kill nobody, added so much to the game
I love you guys. You make videos that are funny, informative, interesting, and help me out with animation/drawing (I'm really new, so seeing Allison's slides help me find out what's wrong with mine)! I subscribed, and you guys deserve every sub you have, and will receive in the future.
I know I'm a huge sucker for admitting this, but mandatory achievements still always made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy.
Achievements are good if they add another layer of challenge, they're just a way of showing people that you actually managed to do something difficult.
My favorite inspiring achievement is hands-down the "Scavenger Hunt" achievement in Bioshock Infinite. It requires you to play through the game on 1999 mode (the hardest difficulty that can have you bashing your head into a wall at certain points) without EVER buying anything from the dollar bill, the store for health, ammo, etc. While this might seem like a simple optional achievement, it completely changes the pace of the game as you have to carefully search every nook and cranny the game gives you for supplies while also being conservative during firefights making Elizabeth's contributions to the game play ever more potent.
Here's my thing about achievements. When looking to buy a game or taking one home for the first time, I look through the achievement list.
Most of the time it'll tell you how the developers expect and want you to play their game and can be a really good way to get a feel for a game before you play it or a way you can divert from their play.
The stealth achievement in Deus Ex: Human Revolution made it something of a puzzle, in terms of working out what you could get away with doing quietly, and what stats to take to further silent killing, and added to the replay of it for me.
Tales of Vesperia had cool achievments. They were mostly all secret achievements and the game quickly taught you that they were unlocked by beating each boss intelligently (or correctly). It encouraged the player to think though the boss battles and because of that discover the secret complexity of the game.
My two favorite achievements are Full lockdown on Black Ops 2 and Dr. Miserable on Payday 2. Both achievements hold their challenge in purposefully failing a task, with Full Lockdown having you let Brutus disable all of your perks, buildables and the box. And Dr. Miserable has you fail to send in the right fusion reactor 11 times and having the last reactor be the fully fuctioning one. Both are really fun as they have you complete tasks hat you wouldn't ever do during normal play.
Few years late to the party but I think having at least one achievement right at the beginning of the game is good for letting you know they, you know, exist and another one as a basic completion quest for telling how many people have actually played through to the end could also be useful.
To whomever wrote the captions: it's "experience". "Experiance" is not a word.
Achievements are also pretty useful for smaller studios to highlight some of the content in their game that they didn't have the time to fully reward in game.
We did this for our game Westerado: Double Barreled, which is an open-world game with non-linear narratives.
Early on we wanted to have some sort of exploration web to let players know what more could be done. But after trying to map it out for ourselves to keep track of content we realised it was going to be very hard to present and implement.
Instead achievements came to the rescue allowing us to highlight all the different ways situations can be resolved, and to get players to think using the tools unique to Westerado (ie. drawing your gun in conversation, and the non-linear interaction with different characters and groups).
Westerado is a great game, and I think the
Mechanics used are pretty unique and fun!
Thanks for making that game
One of the most satisfying achievements I've got, althoug it didn't make me proud, was the good listener achievement in Portal 2.
The game says something like, you took such a spectacularly silly and fun decision, that you have to be rewarded for it.
'Vidmaster Challenge: Annual' for Halo 3 was the greatest and funnest achievement I have had the pleasure unlocking
I like how some achievements in sequels nod at the first game, like how dying in Dark Souls 2 the fitrst time gives you the "This is Dark Souls" achievment, a nod at what made the first one so popular
My favourite achievements were those of The Binding of Issac, they fell into the last two categories nicely, and sometimes you'd stumble on one by accident or luck, look it up and realise there's another four or five you can go for in the same style! I think rogue-like games really need to have inspirational achievements, because of the replay value they create. Steam's function of showing the percentage of players who've gotten each achievement really helps me too, looking at something like "beat the game without taking damage" (real Binding of Issac achievement) seems impossible, but when you see that 0.1% of players have done it, you feel like you can join the elite club too
Dunno if you mentioned this in a later episode, but there's also a set of "Tutorial" achievements. They're sorta like the "Unavoidable" ones but are actually avoidable provided the user never notice the actions needed to get them.
The most obvious game that uses this is Team Fortress 2, where a lot of the achievements, the really easy ones, tells you to do something trivially easy, but not something you'd naturally stumble upon (like, kill x number of enemies with a shotgun as the heavy while your minigun is out of ammo, which teaches the player to, instead of running away in a panic when they run out of ammo, pull out their shotgun to continue fighting). The reason I say they're avoidable is that even though theoretically anyone playing the game as the developers intended will get these, there are at times where if you just button mash, you'll never encounter them. I love playing as the heavy but I've never actually used the shotgun, even when out of minigun ammo, since I can usually memorize where ammo drops are (I only ever used the shotgun to specifically get that achievement).
And you'll notice that that's what the video described as an "Unavoidable" achievement, yet it's still done in such a way that it's memorable and adds entertainment value (if only because of the name).
In other words, Portal is so good it doesn't have to follow the rules.
I feel achievement lists, especially ones with a lot of "go finish the story" achievements, allow the developers and publishers to better gauge what the player is completing in their games. There was a great article in Game Informer a few months back that showed the percentage of players who had certain achievements in various games --things the number of people who bought and finished Lego Marvel, allowing one of sort of judge when the player became bored with the game. Meanwhile, Call of Duty's charts showed how very little its core demographic cared about the single player component, many barely getting by the first level.
I suppose I would argue that the achievements are not just for the player as they are feedback for the developers. True, some are thought provoking, but even that can tell the developer what the player cared about in the game: whether or not without any help they would appreciate the irony of taking a picture of Sander Cohen tells us how much the player was enjoying the story and really getting involved with it.
I read somewhere that the unavoidable achievement system can be used by the developer to monitor what parts of the game people enjoyed the most by looking at what trophies/achievements have been obtained. For example, say you make an RPG with two distinct types of dungeons, say cloud fortresses and hellish catacombs. If you get an achievement for every dungeon you complete, it will be easy to see which type of dungeon people enjoyed the most.
My heart exploded when you showed that Johnny Quest pic
best first forty seconds of an extra credits episode ever.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but one use of unavoidable achievements is as a tutorial, kinda. Minecraft does this to an extent. It's not the best way to make a tutorial and it's not that fantastic as an achievement, but I do think it's a valid reason for using unavoidable achievements.
My favorite achievement is "Party Pooper" from Arkham Asylum. I never would've got that one if I hadn't accidentally attacked one of the mooks outside jokers lair just before entering for the final confrontation. I got a good chuckle out of it when I realized what happened.
Someone needs to gamify gyms. I'd workout like crazy.
I played Kinect Adventures and Your shape Fitness evolved to completion.
The Rationalist its already gamified, the reward is being healthy and feeling great about it
That's not what gamification is.
The gym im going to is already gamified; there are leaderboards and minigames for the work-out machines
What gym do you go to???
I find the entire achievement set of FTL to be very well done. It provides you with a lot of side goals that really redefine the processes you go through while playing it. They have an in game reward behind them, but not something essential. They're slight variations on the ships you own and really aren't required for anything.
Yes, I will go through my first five sectors only fighting by boarding ships. It's an interesting playstyle change.
what of joke achievements?
They are a kind of other achievements but with extra narrative/interactive value.
One thing i know From Software did was use achievements you get for b asic boss slaying / exploration in order to gather data on where people stopped playing Dark Souls: common stopping points for people attempting to get into the series were The Gargoyles, Upper Blighttown, and Sen's Fortress. the designers used the knowledge of common brick walls in the game to design later titles so that players would be better equipped / inclined to play all the way through without losing the series' reputation for challenge. Designers can also track which secret areas / treasures were found by which portions of the population.
notice in later games the concept of summons and NPC summons are better communicated to the player, since the Gargoyles were supposed to teach players about summoning so they could make a 2v1 fight a 2v2 fight, but DS1 didn't exactly communicate the mechanics of summoning very well. Upper Blighttown is an area where new players need a lot of item / auxillary gear support to survive, but since you can't warp, the merchant who lets you stock up on the things you may need is very far away from the blighttown bonfires, and the enemies themselves don't drop antidote moss so you can't farm your supplies without trecking all they way back through the depths and the undead burg. Sen's I think is just a natural break point because it's where the series' difficulty increases again.
However, DS2 gives you the ability to bounce around between four different paths, which means that you can shift gears instead of getting stonewalled by a zone you just can't beat. you can warp all over the place in later titles, which has its own detriments but means that forgetting to buy certain supplies won't force you to walk too and from major zones all the time, and the concept of summoning is much better communicated to players.
I'm slightly disappointed you didn't talk about the other kind of inspirational achievements- those that are a true feat to achieve. For example, I remember when I was playing Warhammer: total war, and I got an achievement by the name of 'The stuff of legend' after achieving an impossible defense. It felt amazing to be able to achieve, and would probably be my favorite achievement to date.
On thing in defense of "unavoidable achievents" is - they can be visible to others.
For one - if there is a line of achievenets for completing chapters of your storyline - you can easily see what percentage of players made it to the final chapter, or where your friends are stuck...
This "involuntary communication" is somewhat helpful in molding your community... I don't know how to phrase it... just look at how having visible raid progress help getting into raid in WOW.
Павел Жданов Good point, but I will say I feel it takes me out of the game somewhat when every climax is punctuated with the same noise. Luckily Steam's achievements are silent and I believe they can be turned off.
Павел Жданов The only problem is looking at the global stats for Spelunky achievements. Those make me a little sad...
Had Babits I once played a PC game (a point-and-click adventure) that waited to give you achievements of this sort until you got control of your character back in the following scene. That game's particular achievement noise would have been even more annoying in cutscenes than the Xbox one.
Павел Жданов I wanted to leave a comment on the topic of the "unavoidable achievement". This achievement is not there for the player, its there for the developer. It lets the developer know when players dropped off. If 95% of people got the first "unavoidable achievement" when playing the main story, and then only 55% got the second one, thats a huge drop off and is worth investigating to see why people stopped playing between those two points. Did something break the person's immersion? Was the boss, or a specific enemy in that area simply too hard? Was that part of the game particularily buggy that some players are running into and needs to be patched? Was there not enough depth? Was the game horribly balanced? I imagine that alot of this you may not necessarily experience at the first or second achievement, but these types of achievements can be useful.
***** Good point, you'd think they'd have much more subtle methods of tracking these things, going by the metrics video.
I like milestone achievements. Mostly because they act a lot like chapter markers in books. A moment when a movement of the game ends and a new one will begin, at least in more narrative focused ones.
The type of trophies I hate are online trophies, the ones that force you to play an online multiplayer mode.
one of the great achievements is in hexyz force where they give you a equipment or an item that you want to get without letting you acidentaly breaking the game
My favorite achievement of all time was "Little Rocket Man" from Half Life 2: Episode 2. Getting it required one to replay the entire game carrying a small statue of a garden gnome, eventually placing it in a rocket ship at the end of the last level. This completely changed how one had to play the game, as the player now had the contesting needs to stay alive and to make sure not to lose the gnome.
The one achievement I do like that you pretty much always have to get is the one in Portal 2, the part where he kills you one. It just adds to the emphasis of the situation.
hahahaaa "Achievement: Fire Extinguisher" lol love you guys you're informative and funny while at it
2:45 HD Remake of Deus Ex you say? There IS Dues Ex: Revision (requires Deus Ex: GOTY to be installed in the same library to play though) released October 2015, a community-made mod & overhaul of the original game updating it to DirectX 9.0c and run on a Vista or newer system with HD textures & 3D models.
Not all inevitable achievements are bad. They can tell things like progression in the game. Like in Terraria. There is achievement for milestones like unlocking hardmode, obtaining wings etc. They are inevitable, if you progress in the game far enaugh, but they add to experience, when you get achievement for crossing milestone for the first time. You can also say that some class achievements in Team Fortress 2 are practicaly inevitable, after you play the class long enaugh. But it still adds that feel of looking at your achievements and see that you have unlocked so much for medic, while almost none for sniper.
I like the idea of achievements rewarding you for doing something awesome on the game - like preforming a 70-hit combo using all four characters on Tales of Vesperia, or killing a dragon in Skyrim using nothing but Frostbolt, the weakest ice-based spell. Achievements that actually challenge the gamer are also very inspiring - like finishing Kingdom Hearts 2: Final MIx on Unknown difficulty and unknown difficuly on lvl 1 - stuff that is REALLY hard to do, and can only be achieved by a minority.
Sharing in the spirit of the video, my favorite "inspirational achievement" is "The One Free Bullet" from Half Life uhh... 2 I think. Now I'm the opposite of a Valve fanboy, but for me it took what was a mostly vanilla (albeit well crafted) FPS and turned it into a uniquely fun experience.
The best kind of achivements are ones that act as tracking tokens. something that allows you to carry things over between playthroughs or games. Mass Effect style. checking yor system for certain achvements etc
This content is so damn useful and its replayability value is infinite, fuck I've watched this video so many times, take notes and everything...
I think that the best achievement system I've seen in a game is Mark of the Ninja, where achievements are directly built into the game. No I'm not talking about the Steam achievements, the ones actually in the game, such as make it a certain distance without being detected and kill a certain number of enemies with a chandelier, which not only make you feel accomplished doing something special and actually challenging, but unlock whole new ways to play for completing them!
The only achievement I've ever done that made me feel like a champ was doing Black Ops' Kowloon mission on Veteran while only dual-wielding. Two achievements done, but a great personal that made me BOOYA to my TV.
My Favorite Achievements are the TF2 ones because you can get hats and weapons from them
I know a lot of my comments recently on these videos are about half-life or doom but A good example of a "Alternate Playstyle" achievement is in half-life 2, Ravenhall is the first AREA you get to use the gravity gun, and the game show's you: "Hey, you can actualy KILL things with this believe it or not!" by showing you right away that zombies can be killed with saws and explosives quite easily, but BECAUSE it's pretty much the tutoriel level for the gravity gun it has so many objects to kill things WITH the gravity gun, that you could BEAT it without even FIRING, which the creators took ADVANTAGE of, because there's an achievement that you can get on the console edition that you get by going through Ravenhall without firing a single gun.
I liked that add-on at the very end of the video.
Dishonored did "Inspiring achievements" really well. It took me about a week of consistent play to get Ghost, Faceless, Clean Hands and the other pacifist/ninja style achievements. And it was just as fun as blasting people into doors.
From time to time it's really tempting to get all of the achievements, or at least it was like that before I got rarest achievement in the game called "Mount&Blade Warband". It has SO MANY of them it's extremely difficult to get all of them in less than 2000 hours.
This game taught me though that sometimes it's better not to try catching 'em all.