PS3 trophy hunting feels much more satisfying

[Beyondthegrave07]

This year I have 3 PS3 plats and 2 PS4 plats so I still enjoy trophy hunting on both systems. I think the issue is that trophies feel cheapened to most people nowadays. AAA trophy lists are a lot easier (no difficulty related trophies for the plat for TLOU2, GoW, and Spiderman) and there are too many easy lists, stacks, and autopops to where people can literally pop trophies in seconds. It just doesn't have the same satisfaction as the pure PS3 only experience that the OGs remember.

 

However, I still think trophy hunting is fun, and it hasn't taken away from my personal experience even with the oversaturation of easy games. Mugen Souls Z was still just as thrilling to pop today as it would've been 10 years ago and platting Disgaea 5 on PS4 was still an absolute delight and great feeling as well even with the clutter out there. Not saying there hasn't been times where I wish certain plats were harder, but you can still find challenges on PS4/5 and you can still always go back and play PS3 games. 

Edited April 28, 2022 by Beyondthegrave07

[AJ_Radio]

13 hours ago, sepheroithisgod said:

Trophy hunting as a whole is more fun when you have to put effort and time into earning something. Trophy standards as a whole started lowering in the middle of the PS4 lifecycle. Just about every game nowadays doesn't even ask you to play the game on the highest difficulty, whereas it was a standard on PS3.

 

I really don't understand why so many people flock to the next 5-minute platinum when it releases.

 

I think this also marked when western AAA developers really started to get lazy and just threw the same boring trophy lists over and over. There are some exceptions, like a few of the later Call of Duty games, Red Dead Redemption 2. For the most part, lists got a lot easier. Ubisoft games are just boring now.

 

Indie titles and games coming out of Japan seem to be the ones that still give out challenging but satisfying lists, while still retaining the old school appeal that they should have. Western developers have lost what makes games good, as AAA publishers continue to get more greedy and throw out more monetization schemes to get more money out of the consumers.

 

EA wouldn't spend the time of day ever doing Dead Space or even Dante's Inferno again. Their later games just come off as lazy on top of being incredibly boring with a generic trophy list as the cherry on top of the cake.

[BrandedBerserk]

5 minutes ago, AJ_Radio said:

Indie titles and games coming out of Japan seem to be the ones that still give out challenging but satisfying lists, while still retaining the old school appeal that they should have. Western developers have lost what makes games good, as AAA publishers continue to get more greedy and throw out more monetization schemes to get more money out of the consumers.

 

Just curious but how exactly did trophy lists getting easier ended up becoming a Japan vs Western thing when they both put out similar lists for the most part? 

 

Same can be said about monetization schemes but I guess everyone closes their eyes on all those overpriced dlc skin packs, In game ads and multiple season passes just for playable characters. 

[CaptainChurrr]

A good reminder for me to boot up my PS3! I have a lot of games for it that I haven't even played. 

[Grunking1212]

Basically PSN Trophy economics ?. Once the Ps4 era came it brought in 2 second My Name is Mayo type trophies. That devalued the value of the Platinum trophy, and made getting triple digits in Platinums easy. Also many mainstream games have very easy platinums (Spiderman, and Horizon). 

[ChouShirakawa]

9 hours ago, Deadly_Ha_Ha said:

I waited until I had 50 PS4 plats before going back to the PS3 but I'm glad I did. Things on the ps3 are how I wish they had stayed and there are so many games to get to on the console. The DS3 is a mighty awful controller but hey, that's why we have HORI 

DS3 has the best pad battery ever. It can last dozen of hours.

DS4 was very disappointing on that point.

[CB7Tuner91]

I completely agree, the start of 2020 i made at vow to myself to get my completion percentage up from 65% to the 90s. Well fast forward till now and im at 83% atm. Point im getting at is ive been having to play alot of my older PS3 games, and over the past two years of this I've realized how much more I enjoy the games from that era. Seems all we get nowadays are F2P live service mp crap. Hell even Sony are going to abandon sp games in lieu of 10 plus live service games they have in development. Needless to say ill be playing PS3 long into the future with where the gaming industry is heading. 

[TimeLordCrow13y]

I definitely think Platinums/100%s are generally harder to achieve for PS3 games than they are for PS4 games. But I’m personally not one to believe hard equals good. And tedious (all those grindy online trophies that got left out of some PS4 remasters/difficultly trophies not stacking on many PS3 games) definitely does not equal good, IMO. 

 

My personal philosophy is this: If I think a game looks interesting, and it’s within my personal budget, I’ll buy it, play it, and try my best to complete it if possible (even if it takes years-and even if I end up disliking a game I once liked by the end-I can probably thank my OCD for that last bit). Meanwhile, if a game doesn’t look interesting to me and/or is not within my budget, I don’t buy it and I don’t play it. I’m a gamer who enjoys hunting trophies, regardless of how difficult or easy they are to obtain, and the trophy system gives my easily distracted self a personal incentive to try to finish games I might not have finished otherwise. 

 

 

[alexhardstyle]

I remember looking for "easy" platinums like "Megamind", "Terminator", "UP" in secondhand forums and making lot of new friends sendind and receiving games. A 5h platinum like Megamind was the easiest and fastest then. Now in 5h you can have... 40 platinums? Nonsense.

 

Oh man I miss that times

[Happy]

In my opinion the tradeoff of having a wider range of games available by making development more accessible on PS4 is still worth the flood of shovelware and the 5 minute platinum singularity that came with it.

 

There should probably be efforts to counteract this on Sony's end by policing what games can and can't have a platinum more. Though admittedly, that might be harder in practice than in theory. For example, imposing a 10 hour minimum time to platting a game would likely just lead to a lot of "accumulate 10 hours of gametime" trophies, which I don't think would be to anybody's benefit. Going with something like difficulty instead would also be rough considering how difficulty is highly subjective. A good metric to use would be platinum rarity, but that's not available to us prior to release. One could go back to having platinums be exclusive to larger profile games but I don't think that would be entirely fair to indie developers who are making quality work.

 

So instead of setting standards for what does and doesn't get a platinum trophy, maybe the real solution is just more quality control and closing the shovelware gates.

[Supermarco1012]

11 hours ago, alexandra-jane09 said:

Would be nice if I could sign in on my PS3, two days of not being able to sign into my PSN account [ main and second] as it tells me the sign in ID or Password is incorrect and I have 2SV disabled for both of them as I am not interested in that feature. I want to get the Platinum for LiberationHD on my second account so this is very frustrating, especially since its a 100% only account.  This I guess glitch [ I hope ] is messing up my progress. 

I got that error too (on PS vita as well) sometimes it just goes away by itself but if you keep getting that error you have to activate 2 steps v and create a device password (same page where you activate 2SV, a little bit lower) then put that device password instead of your normal account password, just for the first time

[Z1MZUM]

I loved Terminator

 

Moving on I have a pile of PS3 games waiting to be played, First will be the Tomb Raider Trilogy. Even bought 2 new PS3's, well new to me.

[HusKy]

You can have these satisfying experiences on PS4 and PS5. The only thing is, you won't be climbing leaderboards. But who cares at this point?

[lettmon]

Is the crazy Saudi Arabian trophy hunter alive still? I imagine easy PS4 platinums made his OCD ten times worse ?

[You]

Yeah PS3 and Vita trophy pops for some reason feel more satisfying. PS3 was easily the most satisfying because the system would tease you. Sometimes would take as long as 10 seconds for it finally appear. That tease where you think omg did I not get the trophy and then just as soon as you're about to boot up a forum page to complain about trophy glitches BANG!! The popping sound which let's be honest, sounds about 3 times louder than it does on any other system.

 

Long live the PS3. The only Playstation system to not be plagued with EZPZ shit games and 6 to 8 stack nonsense.

Edited April 28, 2022 by enaysoft

[ShadyWARcotix]

It's not the console itself, it's the games you choose. PS3 and PS4 both have great games with great list or great games with bad lists.

 

(Or PS5 of course)

Edited April 28, 2022 by ShadyWARcotix

[AJ_Radio]

5 hours ago, Beyondthegrave07 said:

This year I have 3 PS3 plats and 2 PS4 plats so I still enjoy trophy hunting on both systems. I think the issue is that trophies feel cheapened to most people nowadays. AAA trophy lists are a lot easier (no difficulty related trophies for the plat for TLOU2, GoW, and Spiderman) and there are too many easy lists, stacks, and autopops to where people can literally pop trophies in seconds. It just doesn't have the same satisfaction as the pure PS3 only experience that the OGs remember.

 

However, I still think trophy hunting is fun, and it hasn't taken away from my personal experience even with the oversaturation of easy games. Mugen Souls Z was still just as thrilling to pop today as it would've been 10 years ago and platting Disgaea 5 on PS4 was still an absolute delight and great feeling as well even with the clutter out there. Not saying there hasn't been times where I wish certain plats were harder, but you can still find challenges on PS4/5 and you can still always go back and play PS3 games. 

 

I'm basically the same. There's plenty of hard stuff on the PS4, I've done some of them myself (Super Meat Boy, Surgeon Simulator, etc etc). I think what this thread is getting at is the EZPZ games have basically flooded the store to the point where a small number of trophy hunters are basically buying those games deliberately to see their statistics increase.

 

Steam was this way long before PlayStation. I think 2014 - 2016 really marked the shift from having complete, decent trophy lists to more generic lists that don't even require you to beat the game in some cases.

 

You still had easy games like Trine 2 and Hannah Montana: The Movie on the PS3, easily doable in just a few short hours. Those were the exception though.

 

It does irk me to see most of the new games we see on this website consist of overly formulaic trophy lists that you can complete in 5 - 30 minutes. I almost completely forgot Axiom Verge 2 even existed on the PS4 console, given Sony's attitude towards indie games these past few years.

 

4 hours ago, BrandedBerserk said:

 

Just curious but how exactly did trophy lists getting easier ended up becoming a Japan vs Western thing when they both put out similar lists for the most part? 

 

Same can be said about monetization schemes but I guess everyone closes their eyes on all those overpriced dlc skin packs, In game ads and multiple season passes just for playable characters. 

 

This isn't exactly an easy subject to break down. In short, I think most of the modern AA/AAA stuff that is actually good and isn't holding your hand is coming out of Japan. Capcom and Square Enix aren't innocent, they have their hands dirty in the monetization schemes. Sadly, SEGA is beginning to fall down this same path with Sonic Origins.

 

Elden Ring still requires you to experience the game and get those multiple endings. For games like The Last of Us Part II, getting the platinum is rather trivial in contrast to the original Last of Us.

 

2 hours ago, CB7Tuner91 said:

I completely agree, the start of 2020 i made at vow to myself to get my completion percentage up from 65% to the 90s. Well fast forward till now and im at 83% atm. Point im getting at is ive been having to play alot of my older PS3 games, and over the past two years of this I've realized how much more I enjoy the games from that era. Seems all we get nowadays are F2P live service mp crap. Hell even Sony are going to abandon sp games in lieu of 10 plus live service games they have in development. Needless to say ill be playing PS3 long into the future with where the gaming industry is heading. 

 

I'm in the same boat. Although with me, I'll probably move to Steam at some point and stick with PC gaming from the 2000s. I don't like where the gaming industry is heading in regards to PC either. The thought of NFTs frightens me.

 

2 hours ago, TimeLordCrow13y said:

I definitely think Platinums/100%s are generally harder to achieve for PS3 games than they are for PS4 games. But I’m personally not one to believe hard equals good. And tedious (all those grindy online trophies that got left out of some PS4 remasters/difficultly trophies not stacking on many PS3 games) definitely does not equal good, IMO. 

 

My personal philosophy is this: If I think a game looks interesting, and it’s within my personal budget, I’ll buy it, play it, and try my best to complete it if possible (even if it takes years-and even if I end up disliking a game I once liked by the end-I can probably thank my OCD for that last bit). Meanwhile, if a game doesn’t look interesting to me and/or is not within my budget, I don’t buy it and I don’t play it. I’m a gamer who enjoys hunting trophies, regardless of how difficult or easy they are to obtain, and the trophy system gives my easily distracted self a personal incentive to try to finish games I might not have finished otherwise. 

 

 

 

PS3 has lower resolution and lower framerate. Even comparing both versions of Assassin's Creed II, while the PS3 version already looked good, I think the PS4 version looks a bit better. A number of games that got remastered on the PS4 took out some of the padding.

 

Case in point, the online in both AC Brotherhood and Revelations isn't on the PS4 versions. So you can enjoy the story of Ezio at your leisure and earn the platinum trophies at your own pace. LA Noire looks and runs better on the PS4. They did some minor changes and added some collectibles, but it's pretty much the exact same game you played a decade ago.

 

This is where the PS4 is far superior, because I much prefer to play games in higher resolutions and higher frame rate. The PS5 isn't in my budget right now, and it will probably be a long time before I even get a chance to buy it. So I've been basically going between PS3 and PS4.

[Conor]

Honestly I would prefer if new lists were slightly harder but not at the same level as many PS3 lists were- online trophies with stupid grinds, collecting absolutely everything, playing 10 times to get enough resources to upgrade every weapon and item etc all sucked- but on the opposite end you've got stuff like the list for Horizon: Forbidden West which doesn't even require all side quests to be finished like the first game did (although I did them all anyway because I liked the game so much) which really doesn't make a lot of sense to me since the side quests were greatly improved and the lack of trophies can disincentivise many people from seeing them all through. But in general I actually greatly appreciate the straightforwardness of lists these days as opposed to the trophy/ achievement lists of yore. Sure, many developers have taken out trophies for difficulty options which can suck because I think higher difficulty levels reveal the true nature of a game by either highlighting its strengths or making its faults more obvious, but they've also taken out crazy stuff you have to bend over backwards to do rather than something you could accomplish through normal gameplay like "Shoot 6 enemies in the head in a row with a blowdart while a llama on a nearby roof is on fire". I have too many damn games to play and games like Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (which actually got trophies in a patch a few years after release if I remember correctly) really do not warrant the 80- 100 hours it takes to platinum them when you see all that the game really has to offer in half of that time.

Edited April 28, 2022 by Stan Lee

[Rataclies]

21 hours ago, Silocia said:

You got any recommendations for good PS3 platinums? 

I had a really fun time grinding and getting the Platinum for Diablo 3. 

[darkrequiem7]

34 minutes ago, Rataclies said:

I had a really fun time grinding and getting the Platinum for Diablo 3. 

 

I'm not going to say you're wrong, but I'd recommend having something else to listen to while platting Diablo 3. I have 2 plats for Diablo 3, and I remember turning the volume low for the grind while catching up on things like Outside Xbox and VLDL D&D videos.

[Deadly_Ha_Ha]

PS3 trophy pops took too damn long imo. Made me feel more anxious than excited

[technole]

Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox was ahead of a lot of developers at the time when Borderlands 1 came out, said easy achievements translate to sales

 

Nailed it on the head 13 years ago.

 

Early on it was like spitballing. From top-shelf cringe things like grindy online trophies in ranked matches. Now the developer has to moderate boosting in those lobbies when people want to legitimately get higher in ranking kind of things which makes it an awful experience all around. Some things stick today like cheeves that take awhile and should keep a player going when more DLC comes out, so they can't get rid of the game. Many have figured out there is a marketing approach to achievements in-general.

[AJ_Radio]

21 hours ago, Stan Lee said:

I have too many damn games to play and games like Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (which actually got trophies in a patch a few years after release if I remember correctly) really do not warrant the 80- 100 hours it takes to platinum them when you see all that the game really has to offer in half of that time.

 

It's definitely not the first Metal Gear Solid you should play either. I didn't have the game myself, but I watched friends play MGS4 back in the day and it looked simply outstanding. Amazing visuals, cutscenes that looked gorgeous, it was Snake in his senior years involved in some epic battles.

 

However you won't understand much of the story unless you played the previous Metal Gears. I honestly wish the first Metal Gear Solid would get some trophy list or re-release, but knowing Konami, I doubt that will happen.

 

You have to watch those lengthy cutscenes for a trophy too, so it's definitely not a platinum for casuals. Add to that eight whole playthroughs, including the Big Boss emblem which requires you to not be detected once, and you got yourself a pretty respectable platinum for all your efforts.

 

15 hours ago, Deadly_Ha_Ha said:

PS3 trophy pops took too damn long imo. Made me feel more anxious than excited

 

Someone earlier said PS3 games didn't have as many bugs. Well... that is just flat out wrong. Plenty of PS3 games had glitched trophies, made all the worse by the trophy pop delay.

 

14 hours ago, technole said:

Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox was ahead of a lot of developers at the time when Borderlands 1 came out, said easy achievements translate to sales

 

Nailed it on the head 13 years ago.

 

Early on it was like spitballing. From top-shelf cringe things like grindy online trophies in ranked matches. Now the developer has to moderate boosting in those lobbies when people want to legitimately get higher in ranking kind of things which makes it an awful experience all around. Some things stick today like cheeves that take awhile and should keep a player going when more DLC comes out, so they can't get rid of the game. Many have figured out there is a marketing approach to achievements in-general.

 

Marketing and what constitutes as solid, hardcore gaming never mix well. Never has and it never will probably.

 

There's quite a few difficult PS4 platinums, but many of them have a very small, niche fanbase. Just be glad you don't have trophy lists like Far Cry 2 or Resistance 2 that have ridiculous online requirements for trophies. One thing I definitely do not miss from the PS3 era.

Edited April 29, 2022 by AJ_Radio

[Gommes_]

The thing is that during that era there was actually a market for AA games and publishers like EA dared to try out stuff (Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Skate etc.). This is barely the case anymore. It's either AAA or an Indie game. So, a majority of games felt bigger and way more rewarding, since their trophy lists were harder as well. If you just focus on the big games today you almost never have any hurdles in order to get a platinum trophy.

[AJ_Radio]

13 minutes ago, Gommes_ said:

The thing is that during that era there was actually a market for AA games and publishers like EA dared to try out stuff (Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Skate etc.). This is barely the case anymore. It's either AAA or an Indie game. So, a majority of games felt bigger and way more rewarding, since their trophy lists were harder as well. If you just focus on the big games today you almost never have any hurdles in order to get a platinum trophy.

 

Case in point, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Splatterhouse, Lollipop Chainsaw, and The Saboteur.

 

I finished X-Men Origins last month and will be getting Splatterhouse. Hopefully it will be fun.