Greetings,

first let me say that this is not a discussion about the "worthlessness" of achievements. If you are for that discussion please spare me your wisdom. This discussion is geared towards achievement hunter and the generally interested usership. With this out of the way let me ask:

  • Are broken/unobtainable achievements a criterium for you to not buy/play a game? Nothing is here
  • And what is your general stance towards them? You thought something would be written here? You thought wrong O.o
  • And in a very minor aspect how about games with no achievements? Yea, this spot is empty too

Well, I think it is usual to give one's own opinion as a starting point. I would definetely answer the first question with a yes. So I hear people asking already: Would you not play an awesome game just because of broken/unobtainable achievements? That is stupid. I would say yes and no. So far I have played many good games but I don't think I have ever played something I would call a mustplay. There is always an alternative. And since I (read: nobody) don't have the time to play every game in existence I have to make decisions:
If I have the choice between two games which interest me I would of course choose the one which caters to my interest. For the broken achievement games: If a developer can't be bothered to fix his mess why should I be bothered to buy his game? If he can't respect his customers wish I should act accordingly. Random word of the day is 6OLG9. For purposefully unobtainable achievements: I understand that some developers want to mess with the hunters, want to troll them or just show them how stupid the achievement hunt is. Okay, it is their decision to act from their moraly high ground but at the same time I can also choose to ignore them for that. I think that is fair. Do I validate their point like that? Maybe
As for the last point. Like said before I would generally prefer the game with achievements if having to make a decision. But if I am really interested in a game I would also play it without them (but still have enough games with achievements waiting for me). And I would prefer it over unobtainable/broken achievements.
Ah, to make it clear. By unobtainable I am talking about literally impossible to obtain (ignoring bullshit programs like SAM) since there isn't even a corresponding code in the game (looking at .... Love/Hate+? for example?). I can accept if a game has achievements which are just kinda locked by skill. Looking at you VVVVVV. These achievements are theoretically possible. I am just not that patient O.o
And as useless bonus information. I would also refrain from buying games which have have inflationary usage of achievements with an achievement rate of let's say two achievement per minute or higher.

6 years ago

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Achievements aren't and never were a criterion for me whether to buy a game or not, and I normally don't care about them.
However, in some games I like hunting achievements - as long as they're obtainable within and within only the game itself (no 3rd party programs, no weird achievements that force you to play with a specific player/dev or something like that etc.) - but I feel like some devs often don't get the balance right regarding how many and how grindy they should be; for instance, getting an achievement every 5 minutes feels kinda redundant and having to grind thing X for a zillion times makes me not wanna bother with them at all. Almost unobtainable ones can be funny sometimes though, however if they're simply broken or unrealizable at all, it tends to be a warning sign for me that the dev might not really care about the game/consumer and thus making me check twice for any other bugs (possibly game-breaking ones) or shenanigans beforehand. Achievements in general can also pose a distraction to the game's story and full enjoyment for me, so the right balancing is therefore of even greater importance IMO. Still, there's a lot of (mainly older) games with no achievements or trading cards that are more than enjoyable, so for me they're merely the icing on top instead of a general necessity, if any.

6 years ago*
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Well, balance is difficult to find I would assume. There are some people who just want high numbers. Others want just the real hardcore challenges. I normally prefer a spread like some easier stuff, some wacky stuff, some tied to secrets and also some to story. And best if they can obtain at any time or there is some kind of level/checkpoint system. Nothing more annoying than playing a 50 hour games where one decision can trigger an otherwise unobtainable achievement ...

6 years ago
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I'm not usually concerned about achievements at all, but winning a game with broken achievements bothers me because I worry that the person who gave it might think I didn't even bother playing (playtime isn't really an indicator in the age of card farming).

6 years ago
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1) No, actually I don´t care, if game has broken achievements or not. I will find out when I can´t get it during playing. It get me a bit sad, but nothing I can do.
2) I would like to see some tracking in game achievement page instead of checking hunter sites or game forum to find out.
3) Well I prefer to play achievement game - it keeps me in game, because I can show I did that or that in-game, but well there is plenty of games I can play even without achievements. But still my library is categorized in 2 main categories (achievements/no achievements).

And well it is hard to say something about games with lot of useless achievements. Sometimes game can be fun and I am happy to play it, but these nonesense achievements ruins fun a lot (like The First Spark madness). I got all achievements, but still I am not proud of it as I would be with only level achievements.

6 years ago
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Firstly about the issue of games with no achievements, on my most played games list not only on Steam there are various games which have (or had) no achievements. E.g. with around 100 hours played each on TrackMania2 Stadium and Kerbal Space Program, they have no achievements to this day and I still like to play them now and then. So to me not as if a prime directive to play games for sake of chasing achievements.

Nevertheless, I also find that achievements can make a game experience more interesting, such as in terms of more play-time (e.g. in BioShock Remastered having completed the story I may perhaps not have noticed there are also challenge levels if it were not for them coming with achievements) or in terms of seeing on glance which games are done with once 100% and often no mod to try out or no MP-aspect about it. And that is quite why I signed up on Astats as it has quite nice features, such as lists of owned games sorted by achievement percentage had or by play-time, and more. Which in turn did get me more interested in the whole 100% chasing thing.

And that brings me to the first two questions. Yeah, if looking at bundles these days, some games may be somewhat meh, but if they have functioning achievements I may be more interested to purchase the bundle and play them as well besides any game that looks anyhow interesting, especially if the achievements show that there is quite some content in the game when the achievements aren't all as if +1 button pushed. And I find that rather interesting than the whole trading card issue since the trading card aspect seems to cause way more not really any game whatsoever to be sold as if a video game and I sure do not mean to be one of those who support both in purchase and often market fee those putting up as if a tech demo and expecting persons to pay sometimes even around $10 full price for something which is technically nothing (such as case of someone using an Unity asset to sell it as if game and apparently having made thousands of dollars just in trading card fee sales).

6 years ago
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I actually prefer if a game has no (or just progress) achievements nowadays. They were fun for a couple of years, but I care way less now (Especially with all the games that have hundreds of "achievements", that all the garbage collectors jump on to show off on their profile). So it doesn't really bother me when I come across a broken/unobtainable achievement.

6 years ago
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Closed 6 years ago by Adelion.