When "easy" achievement points go wrong!

[Kaido]

as with uber mmorpg players its usually a few siblings (like 3 brothers or something) playing on one account, maybe even 24 hrs a day, to reach the top rankings. its easy to cheat a system like that, and make the rest of us one man gamers feel inferior.

[peeveen]

I reckon the people at the top of the leaderboard are either actually more than one person (eg, a whole family or roommates or the account of a games magazine/website) ... or just plain mentalists.

The achievements are a great thing, in my opinion. I would've played thru COD2 on Pussy level otherwise, and wouldn't have got as much out of the game. But I really hate the achievements that simply require an abundance of spare time. The 1000 match achievement on TigerWoods is just stupid. I actually have a life, y'know!

[EJG1980]

I think the best thing about gamerpoints are definitely the incentive to do things in games that you wouldn't normally do. Like a lot of people, I completed COD2 on normal mode and then went through again on Veteran mode afterwards, which I normally wouldn't have bothered with. I did the same with GRAW, normal mode first, then hard mode afterwards for the extra achievements. I'm not that good at PGR3, which I completed on Silver mode, but now I'm going through to try and get all the Gold trophies... although I don't think I'll manage it

So it's definitely a good way to add longevity to a game. Instead of having games gathering dust on a shelf, or being traded in really quickly, you can keep popping it in the CD tray to try and nab an extra achivement or two. It increases the value for money of the game IMHO.

Personally I wouldn't buy / keep playing a game I thought was **** just to get more points though. But if people do do that I've got no probs with it. People can view the gamerscore however they want, they can ignore it, take it seriously, whatever they like. It's just a bit of fun

But I really hate the achievements that simply require an abundance of spare time. The 1000 match achievement on TigerWoods is just stupid. I actually have a life, y'know!

They're definitely "lazy" on the developers part. Those kinds of achievements that require robot like repetition are just no fun, so I just ignore 'em.

[Matt]

Yep, just ignore those kind of pointless achievements. I want to have a realistic target I can hit without losing my life - seriously, how long would 1,000 online golf matches take?

Though saying that, I keep planning to have an 8-hour session on GRAW to get that achievement, but the game seems even less stable after the update/download so won't bother just yet.

[Myth]

Those 8 hours have to be in the same room too, managed to do it with a mate all day, was 99% sure we'd get kicked at some point.

4 Kills in 4 seconds wasn't hard at all.

[Matt]

I can host the game, it's just I seem plagued by in game freezes at the moment, especially on the new Coffee Plantation map.

4 kills in 4 seconds is indeed easy - team game against bots, get a grenade launcher, you can get 10 in one second. A mate got it same game just by shooting bots swarming in a straight line at him. It would be well tricky against human opponents, as would the 30 Kills Without Dying, but with the bots it can be done.

Though maybe not on the new maps, those bots seem much smarter!

[TheForce]

I think the idea of the gamerpoints is actually a very good one.
I don't care how many points somebody has, I have people in my friends list with more then 10.000 points and I have some with less then 1000 points, I don't care as long as it's fun to play with them online.
For me it's fun to see if I can beat certain things in games that a mate of mine hasn't done so we can fire each other up. like getting all platinum with PGR3, I love PGR3 and , but I didn't like the cone challenges.... but I wanted to get all gold, then I got the hang of things, and I loved the bloody cone challenges ! So I went for all Platinum, and for me it was an achievement getting them all on platinum.
I like to see the others I'm playing with how far they have mastered the game we were just playing...

for me just like many others, it makes coming back to games I would normally wouldn't play anymore... like CoD2 I also played it on veteran because of the achievement, for me it's more about the achievement itself then the points I get for it !

[Rossco]

Yeh true, CoD2 is a true achievements to go through it on Veteran, so thats why I do it, plus its cool to see your score go up, its the same as any other game you get points for, only it's on a grander scale to cover all games.

Gamerpoints is a game in itself. A game we got for free so quit complaining!

[EJG1980]

Yeh true, CoD2 is a true achievements to go through it on Veteran, so thats why I do it, plus its cool to see your score go up, its the same as any other game you get points for, only it's on a grander scale to cover all games.

Gamerpoints is a game in itself. A game we got for free so quit complaining!

That's a really good point, I hadn't thought about that. There are a ton of games (especially older games) where the whole point is to simply beat your high score, and nobody complains about them

[Canton Province]

Trying to beat your high scores is completely different to earning gamerpoints. In game high scores are generally about skill. Earning xbox gamerpoints is a complete mixture of skill related and non skill related achievements and amounts to very little, other then indicating how many games a person has played.

I have nothing against people trying to earning certain skill achievements in games though. Trying to earn skill related achievements is something I can relate to. Trying to earn as many gamerpoints as possible is plain stupid and meaningless.

[EJG1980]

True I suppose. I'd have to agree with you that people who buy a game, think it's a ****, and then still play it for hours on end just to get the gamerpoints are really not putting their spare time to good use. In my opinion anyway, if they get enjoyment from it, good for them

[Canton Province]

I'm not gonna cain anyone for enjoying themselves. If it is enjoyable for people to earn gamerpoints I'm happy either way. I think the principle of it is stupid and meaningless, not specifically the players - who get frustrated that they cant get a certain achievement because they don't want to play through a **** game, or do a mundane achievement like, take 10 ingame photos or play 8 hours straight or what ever.

[peeveen]

Canton: there are a lot of lazy or daft achievements that don't add much to the game, or are even particularly enjoyable to get, but there are also a lot of achievements that ARE fun to try to get. For instance "Pacifism" in Geometry Wars, "Melee Master" in Condemned, the Time Trials in Tomb Raider, or the Bluff in Uno. To get these achievements, you have to play the game in a different way from what you are used to, and so they extend the life of the game. Players have done this kind of thing in the past (I'm thinking of the Super Mario Bros speed completion, or perfect chains in Ikaruga, etc), but now there's official recognition of these kinds of feats, like a badge to wear that says "See, I Did It!".

But I agree that some of them are just crap. Playing for 8 hours straight, while unarguably an achievement, is not something I'm ever likely to do with ANY game.

[Canton Province]

Peeven, If you can differentiate between earning achievements, and gaining achievement points/gamerpoints you'd see where I'm coming from.

Iv'e never said earning achievements can't be fun. I agree with you that some are fun. Gamerpoints are the problem because, as it stands, people are trying to earn them as if they were hi-scores in an arcade, which they are not.

[Brats]

Some arcade hi-scores are based on skill. Others are based on dedication, much like the non-skill based gamerscores. The guy who got the Pac-man hi-score worked out a system that just continuously worked. It wasn't skill that got him that high score, it was dedication and persistance.

I still believe a high gamerscore is a sign of skill. Granted there are scores that are too easy or some that require no skill, only the need for time and persistance. But the point is that there aren't that many of them, and for someone to have a reasonable gamerscore (say 15,000 plus) then that requires skill in some areas without a doubt. You can't get a score that high simply by playing titles like Madden and King Kong alone. Therefore saying the score is acompletely meaningless is too simple an argument and quite incorrect.

I repeat, that doesn't mean someone with a low gamerscore has a lower skill nor does it mean that someone with a score of 16,000 is a better gamer than someone with 15,000, but it is an indicator that the person has skill. It then requires a closer look at where the achievement points came from the determine where their skills lie.

As I said before, a high gamerscore is a sign of skill, but it's not a measure of it. That's the difference.