Why I decided to leave trophy hunting today! Who else have made this same decision?

[StewartBros]

I can empathise with your decision, to a degree.

 

Trophy hunting can burn you out from time to time.  After I platted Twisted Metal years ago, I took a break from gaming altogether, and didn't even turn my PS3 on for 3 weeks, except to watch a few films.  After finishing the Trophies To Fight Cancer event last year, I took another break, and didn't earn a single trophy for nearly 10 weeks.

 

Thus far this year, I've only earned 6 platinums.

 

Take some time off if you need to.  Read some books, catch up with family and friends, pursue a physical activity, or whatever else that you think will bring you some enjoyment, and perhaps somewhere down the line, you'll rediscover that passion for trophies that you had before.  And if not, then you can simply play games the way you used to before trophies and achievements became a thing.

[Dangisuckatgamin]

I never force myself to get plats or anything. It makes trophy hunting much more fun to just enjoy the game but also go for the fun trophies. If I really enjoy the game I’ll usually do plat.

It makes gaming much more fun, still better than boring ass Steam.

[mecharobot]

Tbh, the only game I have been (somewhat seriously) getting trophies in is Genshin Impact since the beginning of the year.  Not saying I won't ever plat anything again, but now that the ps4 is joining the age of dinosaurs, things becoming unobtainable and the general shift in trophy hunting "ideology", I have (or HAD to) made some changes. Still, there is a handful of games where I at least like the idea of having the platinum, games that were not necessarily easy to get and won't be getting remasters, so there's a chance I'll do something with them.

[BrilloHD]

I started shifting to a casual trophy hunter in 2016 (I'm pretty much a day one trophy hunter). That was when I picked up a 3DS. Between that and later the Switch, I found myself having just as much enjoyment going after goals I set myself as I did with trophies. It was almost enlightening haha. In 2016, I also had my big "Why am I doing this?" moment with My Name is Mayo, which feels like a AAA GOTY candidate compared to the games we've been seeing as of late.

Overall, I feel like I found that good balance where I still have fun with trophies, but I wouldn't be upset if Sony announces the end of them tomorrow.

Edited November 2, 2022 by BrilloHD

[Taihou]

I can honestly say I felt the same as you and quit trophy hunting 2 years ago after trying to have multiple perfect accounts as I thought I would be looked down upon for not having a 80%-100% completion account. After looking back on it over the past month I have realised how dumb I was and now am looking on re-joining the hunting journey. I hope this happens to you as well, it does burn you out but hopefully you find the want to do it again! 

[Lava_Yuki]

On 29/10/2022 at 10:17 PM, Hitman_Spinksy1 said:

This sums up everything perfectly. Filling out that sphere grid in FFX long after completing the game just to get the plat makes you wonder why in the hell you are doing it.

The selective gaming is also an issue where you avoid games with known bugged trophies, long games like Diablo 2, hard games or any game you don't see yourself being able to plat. Especially with PS Plus and the amount of games available now where you need to look up a guide, calculate everything before even trying the game. 

 

I've been a completionist as well from the start, filling up a pokedex, leaving the snes on to complete super mario world, all stars in mario 64 etc. But, it felt different when you don't feel forced into it and everything is by choice. Trophy hunting can feel so forced sometimes when you're doing something long into post game just for the sake of it and for that I can fully understand why someone would quit.

Definitely I find myself looking up guides and carefully scanning through the trophies before even considering downloading them to my console, especially for Plus games. I know for sure that if trophy's did not exist like Nintendo, I would have probably downloaded and played them all a bit here and there, from Crash Bandicoot to Nioh, maybe finishing some but only dipping my toe into others.

 

On the PS2 version of FFX I certainly didn't bother with maxing the sphere grid for everyone, in fact I used Yojimbo to beat most of the dark aeons and only got Rikku, Auron and Yuna's celestials. The trophies for making you do everything including all that blitzball, maxing lulu and kimahri grids, two characters I never used for pretty much the whole game was a painful grind that I only did for the trophies. 

[JAK-KRIEG]

I had a 3 month break feeling burned out and overwhelmed after my dad passed away. At that time i found no joy in trophies, fortunately i had a gaming pc and could play games like crusader kings and the total war series.

 

My trophy hunting desire slowly came back so I would advice you to just play for fun and who knows maybe you get your desire back like I did and if you don't it doesn't really matter as long as you're enjoying your hobby.

[Ampki]

I love trophy hunting but when i start to feel the burn, i jump to my xbox and just play whatever till im good to go back hunting. Nothing against xbox just dont like there gamerscore system.

[BlueDragonZero]

You know I always find it strange when I see people talk taking a break or quitting trophy hunting but that's mainly down to the fact that I don't consider myself a trophy hunter in the more conventual sense. 

 

Sure as an umbrella term then I clearly do fit into that description but for me a trophy hunter/trophy hunting cares more about simply getting the trophy then anything else but for me the trophies are more of a list of what the game wants me to see/do. I'm not playing the game specifically to get the trophies, I'm playing the game to enjoy it and the trophies are just another aspect of that. Like others have said I'm a completionist so these can be undistinguishable at times but I think the mental aspect of thinking like this helps me to not stress over the number's game that people seem to care about. When I look at my trophies I like seeing the things I've done in game more then just having the trophy. I'll even do things outside of trophies if I think it will be fun.

 

1 hour ago, Lava_Yuki said:

 

On the PS2 version of FFX I certainly didn't bother with maxing the sphere grid for everyone, in fact I used Yojimbo to beat most of the dark aeons and only got Rikku, Auron and Yuna's celestials. The trophies for making you do everything including all that blitzball, maxing lulu and kimahri grids, two characters I never used for pretty much the whole game was a painful grind that I only did for the trophies. 

 

This is actually an example of doing things outside of trophies. I pretty much did the same in the ps2 version but for the sphere grid trophy I did it the long way and actually completely cleared and reworked it to maximize the stats I could get. Completely unnecessary for the trophy but was fun(ish) to do once. 

 

 

 

 

[Xionzenn]

Yep.. I think this has been in many trophy hunter's subconscious mind when repetitively playing trophy hunting. My initial plan was to retire when I achieved 100 plats, I'm now on 84 & I've decided to retire from the permanent concept in January this year. I'm now only finishing off three games (2 left) so I don't have any unwanted triggers trying to draw me back (online trophies soon to be unobtainable for example) , since then I haven't really relapsed back. I left because it was affecting my health, it became an OCD complex to me where I prioritised it heavily over my other goals. I booked 3 weeks off from work, 2 of those weeks were fully devoted to getting the Evil Within plat & it then dawned on me how draining it really was. What we achieve doesn't really have much value in itself, many people will say "do it for yourself" but are in the linear pattern of platting the same games (Soul games, Resident Evil, GTA, COD, Assasins Creed, RDR etc).. Some are more specific but I don't believe we are all naturally induced to wanting to plat these same game by favouritism and coincidence. It's obvious the algorithm here is pride & value admitting the fact that we don't actually do it for ourselves, if we did you wouldn't have those same people boasting about having hard difficult plats or going through trivial nuisance to retain a completion status. Another reason for me was the standard itself, which corroborate what I just said about not truly doing it for oneself.. The whole ultra rare trophies thing, the rare plats, the sequence of plats, the completion rates.. it was just getting too much for me to comprehend doing. 

 

The backlash I received was unempathetic from some people from the community, I was told to "manage my time better" etc. Which was inconsiderate to other people's track of progress for their own personal life. It just made me realise I dont want anything to do with this lol.

[MontePajton]

35 minutes ago, Xionzenn said:

Yep.. I think this has been in many trophy hunter's subconscious mind when repetitively playing trophy hunting. My initial plan was to retire when I achieved 100 plats, I'm now on 84 & I've decided to retire from the permanent concept in January this year. I'm now only finishing off three games (2 left) so I don't have any unwanted triggers trying to draw me back (online trophies soon to be unobtainable for example) , since then I haven't really relapsed back. I left because it was affecting my health, it became an OCD complex to me where I prioritised it heavily over my other goals. I booked 3 weeks off from work, 2 of those weeks were fully devoted to getting the Evil Within plat & it then dawned on me how draining it really was. What we achieve doesn't really have much value in itself, many people will say "do it for yourself" but are in the linear pattern of platting the same games (Soul games, Resident Evil, GTA, COD, Assasins Creed, RDR etc).. Some are more specific but I don't believe we are all naturally induced to wanting to plat these same game by favouritism and coincidence. It's obvious the algorithm here is pride & value admitting the fact that we don't actually do it for ourselves, if we did you wouldn't have those same people boasting about having hard difficult plats or going through trivial nuisance to retain a completion status. Another reason for me was the standard itself, which corroborate what I just said about not truly doing it for oneself.. The whole ultra rare trophies thing, the rare plats, the sequence of plats, the completion rates.. it was just getting too much for me to comprehend doing. 

 

The backlash I received was unempathetic from some people from the community, I was told to "manage my time better" etc. Which was inconsiderate to other people's track of progress for their own personal life. It just made me realise I dont want anything to do with this lol.

 

Same dude, I was going to stop at 100 plats, I am at 48 and already tired

[Woodsteel95]

As someone who got seriously into trophy hunting a few months ago. I can definitely say the biggest negative to trophy hunting is that I'm finding myself unwilling to play games on other platforms as I'm not earning trophies. I was going to play Dragon Quest Treasures for example, but couldn't bring myself to do it lol. Xenoblade 3 story DLC and Tears of the Kingdom is coming out soon and I just know in the back of my head as I'm playing them I'm gonna be thinking "This is X amount of time I could have spent trophy hunting". 

 

That's the biggest negative to being a trophy hunter for me, the mindset that I feel like trophies is like my wages for playing a game haha. But I'm not going to let the mindset take over me that I have to plat or 100% every game I play. I absolutely do write off games if I feel the fun factor is gone and the rest of the trophies look miserable (or I just plain don't find the game fun). As satisfying as 100% completion accounts look that isn't the life for me honestly and I have a huge respect for people who can maintain that. I'm aiming to be a 75-80% account that plats what I feel like platting, 60% atm so I'm working towards it. 

[FruitSalad881]

I find this interesting as I have felt this way for the past year or two and I am surprised to hear that others feel the same. I usually try to play during my free time to get as many trophies as possible, then have months of burn out later where I will either not game at all or just play games that I enjoy. I recently have been trying to go through my back log to finish games, but it has been burning me out. I think trying to finish games that hold no interest are the most to blame. Other games I can enjoy normally, but despise later on when trying to get all the trophies.  

 

I feel like I have also skipped out on games because I didn't want to grind the trophies out or they were a difficulty that I did not think that I could achieve. 

[WiktorM101]

Tbh it looks like op quit gaming not just trophy hunting (at least on playstation).

Only autopopped 1 plat, played few games of F1 and hardly played anything else since the post. Only 1 trophy in 2023 and that for not really even playing watch dogs 2 tutorial phase to the end.

I don't think trophies were real problem here.

 

It's very hard to give up hobby. 

Edited April 20, 2023 by WiktorM101

[ThatMuttGuy]

12 minutes ago, WiktorM101 said:

Tbh it looks like op quit gaming not just trophy hunting (at least on playstation).

Only autopopped 1 plat, played few games of F1 and hardly played anything else since the post. Only 1 trophy in 2023 and that for not really even playing watch dogs 2 tutorial phase to the end.

I don't think trophies were real problem here.

 

It's very hard to give up hobby. 

 

Could just be taking a very long break. If you looked at my profile before a few months ago, you'd see that I didn't have any trophies for like a year (was obsessed with FFXIV and I was playing on PC). Eventually I came back to trophy hunting though!

[Xionzenn]

17 hours ago, MontePajton said:

 

Same dude, I was going to stop at 100 plats, I am at 48 and already tired

It's tiring to say the least, especially if you set yourself up for huge targets for games to achieve. I'm doing a course soon in my spare time after work and I haven't done one since 2020 which was when I properly started trophy hunting. Also i was going through hair loss, weight gain, many things that have been corrected ever since I stopped trophy hunting. All I do now is play for fun maybe 2 hours a week 

[Kulzyc]

I can't even count the number of times I said to myself that I'll quit trophy hunting in my 10 years "career"?. It's a never ending hole. But that's how it supposed to be. You love it and you hate it ?‍♂️. Take some days off and then start again in a few days and vice-versa! I do agree about the worse side of trophy hunting, about not playing some games because "trophies too hard" or "too grindy". It's hard to stop thinking like this but everyone will eventually get over this, some faster than others ?. Also, trophy hunting changed a lot over the years, and the addiction of shovelwares is slowly killing the fun in it. I'm myself trying to get over it.

I was able to stop myself from buying games with only gold trophies (hey it's a small victory?), I still have some downloaded in my PS, I'll eventually play them but right now I'm slowly trying to get my silver trophies above my golds. Trying to feel like a "normal" looking profile and not having more golds than silvers ?. Anyway, we're all different, I support everyone in this forums, you do you, as long as you make the choice you believe makes you the happiest! 

[Carttagos]

On 29/10/2022 at 9:47 PM, Kemu912Aroha-Nz said:

I loved trophy hunting, since I had a playstation 3 and I had told myself at that time, I am only going to platinum my favorite games. Anyways it was awesome and I never had friends at that time who played games with me. When I had my first playstation 4 back in 2014 (April) I had 345 trophies, and in 2015 I has started to just go bigger with platinum trophies. I have done a few big games like; Gta v (100%) The division 1 (76%), The division 2 (100%), all 4 ps4 Need for speed games platinumed, red dead redemption 2 (100%), etc.... So trophy hunting at the start was real fun for me to be honest and I really enjoyed it a lot. The last few weeks just feels different and I don`t enjoy trophy hunting anymore. It feels like work for me now. All the collectibles and missable trophies and also 100% game completion trophies are just insane sometimes. Yes it is fun to can look back and just be happy about a platinum trophy or even a 100% game completion (with all dlc`s included) and some good games I really miss to play. I decided after I has sitting and struggled with F1 2019 and Supercross 5 to just stop and play for the fun and not to do some trophy hunting anymore. Obviously every person has his own decision about gaming and every gamer can decide what he/she wants to do and a trophy is a trophy but sometimes that trophy are just ridiculous to obtain and sometimes that trophy doesn`t even pop, because the game does glitch out. So yeah this is why, I decided to stop today and I want to know who else also feels like me and don`t enjoy it anymore? 

 

Gaming are supposed to be fun and that`s why I am going to play for the fun from now on and just enjoy myself out there.

I think the issue for many people is that they think they need get 10 platinums in less than a week and buy all new games that are releasing everyday and that's wrong. Just play what you want and If you like it, just go for the plat.

 

Don't waste time thinking that you need to get everything, play on your own pace and without pressure.

 

I wish you the best.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Carttagos

[megacoolermensch]

wait i'm leaving too

 

[Squarevii87]

10 minutes ago, megacoolermensch said:

wait i'm leaving too

 

This isn't the airport,you don't have to announce your departure

[krainm8]

I just logged in to reply to this forum post. I've made the same decision. The reason is most of the game expects a gamer to do a lots of bs stuff, I get it, the idea of doing a platinum is to love the game so much that you have played the game for like 500 hours, so the platinum gets done by 96%. But so many games to play, I feel like if I want to plat 20 games I would have played 100 games. Sometimes I miss the feeling of trophy hunting, but grinding one game for the platinum trophy makes me hate the game so much that I just delete the game, I can't stand it anymore. Was this meant to happen ? No. But it does. Another thing is online trophies = server shutdown/empty lobby. So yeah. I follow the leaderboards, and see matrixlord212 playing on YouTube. It gives the feeling of I am competing with him too. So yeah, that's all. 

Edited April 21, 2023 by krainm8

[DrBloodmoney]

1 hour ago, Carttagos said:

I think the issue for many people is that they think they need get 10 platinums in less than a week and buy all new games that are releasing everyday and that's wrong. Just play what you want and If you like it, just go for the plat.

 

Don't waste time thinking that you need to get everything, play on your own pace and without pressure.

 

 

I think that's a healthy attitude.

 

Even if you someone is a "completionist" by nature, there's no law saying they need to do everything as fast as they can, or "finish up" something before starting something else, or force themselves through a game they don't want to play - or don't want to play at that moment -  just to "clear space" for something else.

 

No rule that you need to play every game you fancy as soon as it releases, or only play stuff with trophies, or turn a fun hobby into a noose around your neck.

 

Trophy Hunting can be fun, but it's a marathon, not a sprint...

... and is supposed to be a nice addition to a hobby, not a poison chalice.

[TalalHmd]

I've been in gaming rut, so I've barely played games this year. but since I forgot to turn off ps plus autorenwal, maybe I should use this as an experiment and play anything I find interesting for 30 minutes of so.

 

in seriousness, I can't see myself doing this, but I'll probably start a couple of decent looking games, with no intention of getting the platinum and see how it goes. not every game is worth getting the platinum for. the key is to find balance, which is easier said than done. 

 

I avoided the Yakuza series because of the trophies, even though I loved the games I played. I should just marathon the series and to hell with trophies 

Edited April 21, 2023 by TalalHmd

[cy1999aek_maik]

You can take the man out of trophy hunting but you can't take the trophy hunter out of the man

[jusher1987]

I get like that sometimes too buddy! Take some time out and play a game for the thrill of it rather then for trophy hunting!