Well designed achievements

Hey guys!

Today I want to talk about achievements.

Some people (actually most people) don't even look at them. I think this is not natural because who wouldn't want to catch all the pokemon, and have 100/100. It is a symptom of a certain type of situation.

Firstly, games have become so abundant that most people will barely play them to the end because there is always something else to play. It is basically a race against saturization, attention, and a way of getting the most out of your time. In the old days, it was a bit different. You would get a game, and then you would play it until the cd broke and really get into every nook and cranny and find every easter egg by just having fun with the game.

Secondly, some achievements are just too hard or too time consuming to even attempt. The prospect of never being able to get those 100/100 motivates people to try to preserve their ego by making themselves think they don't care about achievements, and so there is no problem if they don't get them. they have a vested interest in protecting the notion that achievements are a useless waste of time.

And this brings us to our main topic. Achievement design. There are well designed achievements that add something to the game by revealing a hidden boss or area or item, or making you play a level in a new and interesting way. And then there are achievements that are just aggravating for almost 100% of the playerbase. Achievements that have 0,5% or lower completion rate on steam. Not because they are good and interesting, and fair, but because they are hard, time consuming, and simply not worth it. I personalyl thing that if you alienate 99% of the playerbase from even attempting the achievement, then this is a bad achievement. You are stealing the 100/100 away from them. Why? So you can cater to the small korean fanbase of speedrunners who think it is interesting to finish a game in less than 3 hours without dying even once? Co-Op achievements which aggravate people who have no friends. Lazy achievements that give you an arbitrary naumber of whatever to collect in the game, which will take you 70 hours to do, and literally adds nothing to the game? So many bad examples.

I think schievements should be single palyer and offline. No daily logins, no dependance on 20 people gathering into a raid and working together perfectly, no co-op achievements, no simply unfair achievements like the one in garys mod where you have to have thousands of hours in the game to get it. That one is beyond the scope of even "collect 1 billion things". In order to get it, you would have to idle 24/7 for years. That one was made by a complete maniac that doesn't deserve respect.

Having gotten to this point, we also have to mention people who like achievements to be extremely hard and exclusive. They, having achieved them, have a vested interest in keeping them rare in order for their exclusive club to stay exclusive, That's the other side of the coin.

Some developers also have a vested interest in making hard achievements to attract those hardcore people, so they can achieve them and be exclusive amongst the unsuspecting normal people who have bought the game because of its popularity.

In short, I think achievements should be achievable. Hard enough for people to take a few tries, but be able to finish thme in a reasonable amount of time. Dark souls achievements are perfectly adequate for my taste. Speedrun ones, and one-life ones aren't. MGSV achievements are also perfectly fine because the game has just an abundance of content (even though 1 or 2 are online related). Age of Empires 2 has good achievements that make you play scenarios with certain handicaps. But it also has impossible multiplayer achievements that require you to win online, which is impossible without a friend, and in a reasonable timeframe. I can't remember many bad examples because I simply don't buy them. I want 100/100, but refuse to have to play for hundreds of hours to achieve it. One example would be arpg hardcore achievements like in diablo or poe that require you to not die, but also kill the last boss, which takes many hours, much luck, and is unreasonable as an achievement for the whole populace because only less than 1% will be able to complete it. Also, timegated achievements like in some online games are just unfair to the people who can't play at that time.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on achievements. Well designed ones could enhance the feel of the game, increase the gameplay time, and the fun factor, without aggravating people.