Achievements have made games worse.
I discovered this after buying a steam game that I had pirated. All of a sudden I’m doing boring and repetitive stuff that I don’t enjoy, just to unlock some dumb trophy.
Any enjoyment for the players and creativity by developers has been long eclipsed by the lazy paint-by-numbers boring achievements who’s only function is to artificially extend “engagement”.
They should just sell the platinum trophies.
They’re not inherently bad. You could say modern style Mario games have achievements because some things are optional and super hard.
I dunno. Perhaps because I don’t play a lot of games with exorbitant amounts of achievements but for me in games like Hollow Knight they were sort of a roadmap. The thing is, you can just complete the ones you want. In my playthrough on the switch (where some of the achievements were just hidden), I didn’t get the same sense of having checked something off my list as I did when playing on steam. It’s almost like since nobody can really see them there’s no joy in it. But on steam I felt more pride in those same achievements.
I think achievements are great for when you’ve finished a game but you want to keep playing it. A fun, additional challenge for when you’re not ready to be done with a game. Emphasis on fun though; you could easily design boring or frustrating achievements.
