They've always been a waste of time IMO. The only time I'd do them was when i owned very few games and had to squeeze every drop of value out of each one.

There are some cool ones like factorios finish the game in under 8 hours but most are slop. I think theres still a place on steam for them. I can go on peoples profile and see the ones they've chosen to display and how rare they are.

If you use mods you can usually get a mod to reenable them if you care about it.

I like the different approach some games take, like Minecraft's “advancements”. They're per save, so mods don't disable them (in fact, many mods add their own), and a nice indicator of how much progress you've made in a world already.

And people who care about “completing” a game can still do that in a single save and show off the advancement progress window there (although it can be cheated just like in any game).

There's just no global statistics anymore.

Idgaf about achievements. It always was a scattered mess and (imo) epeen length comparison. I play for the experience and fun of it.

Ymmv. Have fun however you're having it!

You can usually reenable achievements with another mod, if they matter to you.

I love achievements to the point I've been replaying a ton of old games just cause of retroachievements. As for what I'd think of others not wanting them, I don't really care what you do. I do see a lot of pushback against achievements, especially whenever the topic of Nintendo adding them comes up since they're the only platform without it, so a way to just permanently system or game wide disable them would be nice for those people. Something easy to access so you wouldn't have to dig in menus for it.

Could be an age thing. 20 years ago on the 360, achievements I cared about. By the middle of the PS4 generation, I stopped caring about PS trophies. On Steam, never cared about Steam achievements. 20 years ago being a completionist was an interest of mine which included achievements. Today, I'm fine not finishing games

I really like seeing the breakdown of what percentage of players have done X, Y, or Z compared to me. When achievements were first implemented, it was the first time developers had real data about how people played their games, and it influenced how games would change after that. I don't think many people are circumventing them via mods percentage-wise, so they're mostly a good representation of the sample size's behavior. I rarely go for all of them, averaging about 35% of achievements per game, but I did just 100% Escape from Ever After not long ago, and part of that was getting all of the achievements in it, which was a fun little extra activity to do in a game I really enjoyed.

If you really don't want that record attached to you, you could prioritize playing games from GOG via offline installer, I suppose.

Achievements are background noise for me, I only chase them if they sound fun to chase. I have done all the achievements for a few games intentionally, but only if there are like a dozen or less that don't just happen naturally by playing.

I like achievements. I don't compare them to anybody else, they just give me a goal and personal sense of accomplishment. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth would have been a lot less satisfying to complete if I didn't get to see 641/641 achievements on my profile.

In 99% of games I've played that disable achievements with mods, there's a way around that on PC. In the aforementioned The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, as long as you beat the first "final" boss a single time, you can use mods freely. In Fallout 4 as you've mentioned... there's a mod that re-enables achievements. So this is an irrelevant issue to me.

As far as your other question goes, I'd be more than happy to see achievements be opt-out. On Steam you can always hide your library or use SAM to get rid of them all when you're done playing, but that's obviously not ideal.

I think they're relevant for people who like them. Most games I don't care, but for games I really like I'll use achievements to see of there are things I haven't yet discovered.

Sometimes it's fun to compare to friends.

I don't really know why they disable them with mods installed. If a person cheats and gets them all, who cares? It's not like there's actual value. If it makes them happy, let them be happy.

And yea, an opt out feature for people who don't want them would be good, too.

As you can see, I care about achievements: https://sh.itjust.works/post/56525516

As others have said, it’s a great incentive to go deeper in a game. It should just not become a grind and that’s why I don’t 100% a lot of games.

It can also make you remember what branch of a story you went for in a story driven game.

If it gives data to developer about how a game is played, it ain’t something I mind as the way I play isn’t a important privacy wise as other data.

What’s stupid is when people buy a game just because it has easy achievements though..

They are marketing shenanigans, they always have been. Those who care about them is the people who are sensible to such marketing tactics.

I'd say you're definitely overthinking it. I'll look at the high end achievements if I've finished a game I like, as that could point me towards things I may have missed during my initial playthrough, but other than that, I don't think about them at all.

If I actually do 100% a major game (Like I did for Fallout New Vegas) I'm proud to have accomplished it, but I'm not losing sleep over the other 3000 unfinished titles I've played.

I only achievement hunt for certain games. Granted, I'm not a hardcore gamer or anything. I'm probably the guy that most hardcore gamers hate. I'm old school, in my day, you could just pick up a game and go. You'd peruse the manual a bit on the ride home from the store and you'd have a pretty good idea of how to play it once you got home. Some games today are still that way, hell some are so intuitive that you just pick it up and you already know how to play(spiderman), some haven't changed enough in decades to be a problem. (Gran Turismo, call of duty, Madden). However even if you understood HOW to play a game, some were just hard AF. Everyone understood how to play the stampede level on lion king, very few could beat it.

The point of that previous paragraph is to put a perspective to my response. There weren't achievements growing up. In fact, many games were so hard, or so badly designed that it was nearly impossible to beat unless you were so ridiculously dedicated that you wouldn't have enough time to get into other games. I played the original command and conquer games and absolutely loved them but tropico has like 45 fucking menus and I just can't remember or be bothered to learn every single minute detail. However, Gran Turismo only got more detailed gradually enough that it came naturally, even if I skipped several iterations. My point is, I try a lot of games, especially the free stuff on PS+, that I like the idea of, but when I play it I'm just like nah, fuck this like tropico, I even made my guy look like trump lol. Or games that are too big that I'm just not gonna try to 100% but I love all the same like cyberpunk. I really like DayZ but I never played the arma games and have no idea really what I'm doing. It's fun but I know getting platinum just isn't happening but I have fun.

So I guess my point is, I don't blame anyone for not getting platinum. Currently I only have 4. All the insomniac spiderman games and fallout 4. I want to play a game for the game. Hunting trophies feels like a job, unless I realize I'm pretty close just by playing the game. So if someone wants to play a game without achievements being shown I wouldn't judge. I like fighting games but won't play DOA because I dont want to catch shit from my friends for being thirsty.

Also sorry if my post is a little disjointed and rambling. I've been writing this during commercials while also getting progressively more buzzed.

I saw one other person mention RetroAchevements and I second their love for adding it to older games-- in these cases, though, they're a passion projects by fans and while they maintain a leaderboard, the main thing to be is it legitimizes some retro gaming by disabling save states and cheats while still having sets for modded games. I think it sets a good standard for what the industry should be doing.

For instance, it checks those boxes; it's opt-in by default and there are privacy options, although hardcore mode requires rich presence for enforcement of the rules. There's still the softcore option though. The sets have rules about what you can make, leaving grindy and multiplayer stuff as subsets. And again, modded/hacked roms get support, since all it takes is a user wanting to develop it (except Pokemon Clover, that's banned for pretty good reasons lol)

At this point, it feels more legit than Steam, Xbox or PlayStation achievements. If the industry adopted a similar model, most of your concerns would be addressed although it's likely impossible since developers often have to write achievement code that fits all platforms.

(Oh, and if you can't tell, my answers to the questions, mod use makes it irrelevant on PC and permanence does matter to me, although not for any good reason: RA badges are nice to look at. Lol)

I like them. They've given me incentive to try out playstyles I wouldn't have like the ghost achievement for Dishonored where you can't alert or kill random npcs in the game.

I haven't run into many scenarios where mods disabled achievements and if they did I would play with the mod over achievements if it brought enough quality of life improvements.

I'd love to have them go away if only to stop people from leaving reviews that say "easy achievements, quick way to get 1000 gamerscore." I can't imagine the type of person who bases their motivation to play games on that

I'm kind of achievement hunter, my Steam profile has 33 perfect games and 70% avg. completion.

I always saw achievements as a way to enjoy 100% of the game, I see it as path that developers build to make sure you experienced everything that was made to be experienced.

You can just play a game on normal, finish the game, see the story once and done, goodbye.

But then you decide to look the achievements list and see things like:

• See the ending B, C and D
• Unlock X weapon and kill 500 enemies with it
• Discover all areas of the game
• Etc...

Isn't it cool? I think it's pretty cool to be honest.

Hunting achievement has add like a few dozens of hours to my games, which make my money worth more per hour.

$40 a game -> finish main story in 20h -> $2/h
$40 a game -> finish main story and all achievements in 40h -> $1/h

This has literally nothing to do with marketing, pretty the opposite, it's hard to see good made achievements because it's kind of an extra thing which doesn't add much value to the game as a whole.

I like when developers make good achievements: challenging but not too hardcore, motivating you to explore everything and find easter eggs for example.

On PC there are almost always mods to turn achievements back on, regardless of how many mods you have installed.

I like achievements because they give me an idea how much of the game I've already experienced, and because they sometimes encourage me to change up my play style. And getting a very rare achievement is always nice. They're not super important though, so if you don't want them I'm totally OK with that.

I pay pretty much zero attention to achievements.

Warning, this mod will disable achievements.

Disable away motherfucker!

I'm not asking to get rid of achievements, I'm asking for a compromise, I'm just questioning the importance of achievements, there are devices and or cheats to unlock all achievements and those who use mods and don't care for what achievements they have, that's not reliable developer data. Like my post states I see many sides of this discussion, pro achievements, neutral to achievements, and I guess in my case questioning of achievements. One's either pro or neutral two game achievements, in truth I have yet to hear anyone who wants achievements GONE, or at the very least an option to clear or delete one's achievement history, it's the permanency of the thing for me you see.

I don't think I've ever gone much out of my way for achievements for their own sake. Games where they also unlock stuff (eg: binding of isaac), sure, but that's for the unlock.

I may have done some challenge stuff that I learned about for the achievement, but only because it seemed fun. I wouldn't go very far into anti-fun just for an digital badge on my profile.

Relevant to what? I've never had a reason to care.

I personally think that all PC achievements are meaningless since it's easy as fuck to use an outside tool to unlock them instantly with things like SAM - Steam Achievement Manager.

Even if that wasn't the case, generally most achievements are not challenges; they are grinds. I have always ignored the grindy ones ("kill a million enemies" type shit).

Really the only thing that got me to even be an achievement hunter for a while, was Playstation's now defunct Stars program. You were able to earn actual money by simply earning trophies. The rarer the trophy, the more points it was worth so 100% things for the platinum trophies was worth it. I ended up buying like half the games I own on PS5 through that system.

They were never relevant. It's a Skinner box mechanic that really triggers certain people's dopamine production in an addictive manner.

'Chievos are a very personal thing, they were never important unless you personally thought they were. If you don't think they're important anymore, then great. If you want to chievo hunt, also great. Gaming is what you make of it.

I just want to say thanks for reminding me to play The Stanley Parable to get the Go Outside achievement. I beat it by 6 years! I hadn't played it in 11 years!

Steam does have an option to hide all of your activity in a certain game, but not to cherry pick certain achievements. I think it’s so you don’t have to broadcast your 235 hours spent 100%ing Kink Simulator to your entire friends list.

Guys, many of you fail to realize this but achievements, and the system surveillance required to validate them are valuable data to game publishers.

They arent going away without a fight.

I usually don't hunt them but some times i do, if it's a game I'm particularly interested in and i don't have to go out of my way too much for them. I also like how you can tell a story with them. In the Talos Principle for example there are very branching options that you decide on by being attentive and by testing your philosophy. On my achievement showcase i can now show which path i went on my favourite game.
There's also the aspect of hints. They hung at little extra challenges and generally tell you there's something left to experience in the game. For example BG3: after finishing the game I have only 26/54, so i know there's a lot of content I've not explored. I might eventually do another run of it. Had i like 40 something achievements I'd be like "yeah idk that little extra content isn't worth digging for 60 hours again. I also like the aspect of seeing the achievements of friends showing up in my timeline so i know if i can talk about a certain part of the game without spoiling it.

Oh also if you don't want some achievements to show up for friends, you can hide the game and activity for others.

I'm going back and getting some Xbox 360 achievements right now, but I don't really do it in new games.

For me, they're just a nice to have. I don't actively chase them or anything, but it's sometimes neat to see when I did a thing that only 1% of players managed to do. I personally don't care that they're public. If I did, I imagine I'd have a private Steam profile anyway, so the achievements would be a moot point. I don't see a meaningful difference between publishing my achievements and my other game activity like play times.

I like reading the achievements to see what they thought was...important I guess. I usually don't chase achievements on purpose though. And I never 100 percent. Closest game I have to that is uhhh Heaven's Vault and the last two I need are. Hoo fuck. Complicated it looks like. Well one is. The other is more annoying it seems.