Achievements/Trophies bad for gaming says Ubisoft dev

[D-E-U-S-X]

Real life is bad for gaming not my precious trophies!

[MarcusPunisher]

Ubisoft dev said:

[ExHaseo]

I mean, he's not wrong. Depending on the game, he's also not right either. You can find good and bad examples of each for sure. I completely understand his points though.

 

As achievements were introduced, they've been used as a crutch and excuse for bad and cheap game design. Instead of creating more content, they add grindy trophies. One of my favorite examples of this is the Tales of series. Look at Tales of Symphonia, then look at Tales of Xillia. Tales of Symphonia was originally a Gamecube game and has so much content it's obscene. In addition to being considerably longer and having more content overall (especially optional content), it encourages multiple playthroughs thanks to variable scenes depending on a character affection system. These variable scenes and optional content can also create a more unique experience for each player. Then look at Xillia, all the actual content is very bare, it's exceedingly linear, and it relies heavily on repetitive grinding created by the trophy list to add game time. That's what they meant by "narrows games down." Actual content isn't needed if they can just make people do the same thing over and over instead.

 

Then there's how trophy lists dictate how people play games. A lot of people, especially here, look at trophy lists before they start a game. Doing this dictates how they play the game, since they'll be trying to do the trophies while they play. I know many just follow a guide from the start so they don't miss anything as well. This is what they meant by them disrupting and diverting attention. People are focused more on the trophies than the experience. Instead of playing the game figuring things out on their own, people just do what the trophy list tells them or what people online tell them is the "best" way to do things. I know not everyone does this, but an artist tends to focus on the worst of something. Which is clearly what's happening with this person.

 

And to their last point, it absolutely eats resources. Any dev will tell you the same thing. There's a reason indie games tend to have easy and very simple lists. Creating trophies can cause problems in a game, since any line of code can potentially break something. So whenever they're having to create a trophy list, they need people to not only create the trophy trackers and checks throughout the game, but also fix the problems they cause. It's also something separate that needs to be tested, which adds more work for the testers. Even on the most absolute basic level, having someone working on trophies means they aren't working on adding more content.

 

I will say that overall, I think the issues here are getting better though. Primarily thanks to the simplification of trophy lists. A lot of these issues were way more prevalent in the PS3/360 era, and have gotten better in recent years. Very few games actually require 100% completion for the plat anymore and plats are just getting easier overall. People not using game time as a metric for whether a game is good or bad anymore is helping a lot. Devs don't have to make their lists super grindy to inflate game time anymore. Being easier means not having to focus so much on them and being simpler should be making for less resources having to be spent on them too. So, like I said, he's not wrong, but he's not right either. It's a definite grey area that could be argued either way depending on a person's perspective.

[MidnightDragon]

Real rich coming from Ubisoft

[Long-Ryde]

I disagree because trophies breathed life into gaming again for me. They made me try for new objectives, and go further into games. rather than aimlessly playing them -- though I do enjoy an aimless play every now and again.

 

I love the sort of "scaffolding" that trophies and achievements can provide for me when playing a game.

 

GTA is a great example because the trophies align with essentially doing everything in the game. Something I wouldn't normally be inclined to do personally. It's not distracting in any way, and is a solid layout of what the game has to offer you.

 

Trophies can give me an incentive to play a game outside of my normal approach, while also usually being a solid symbol of completion for the game -- allowing me to move onto many of the hundreds of games in my backlog.

 

That's not to say trophies can't be executed poorly, making them excessively grindy or "not in the sport of completion" (See: Ratalaika games that give you platinums for getting through 3 levels of a game)

 

Regardless, I think trophies only become a burden to developers who want their games to be played endlessly, which isn't in favor of gamers.

 

-- A little anecdotal experience of that --

Years ago, I got a little depressed at the idea that my favorite online games (TF2, SMITE, later Overwatch) were essentially endless with little tangible progression outside of personal skill, which even then is a pretty unpredictable metric, especially in team-oriented games. Someone will always be better than you, someone will always have cooler items, and then if it was team related, I hate losing on someone else's dime; felt like a complete waste of time.

 

After I quit online games, trophies not only gave me a definitive goal to accomplish, but also a hard stop for playing games in my backlog, which for me personally, is usually the perfect amount I want to play the game if not enough to get me to not want to play the game again.

 

 

Edited January 11, 2023 by Long-Ryde
spacing

[KingGuy420]

2 minutes ago, MidnightDragon said:

Real rich coming from Ubisoft

 

It's not though. It's just some random dickhead.

[MidnightDragon]

2 minutes ago, KingGuy420 said:

 

It's not though. It's just some random dickhead.

Even better.  

[SpaceIsDandy]

Translation: Trophies are bad because my bosses keep making us design shitty minigames and 10,000 hidden collectables for every game ?

 

 

Some the rarest plats from indie games arent they? I  feel like I have played just as many AA/AAA games with very simple cookie cutter lists (max out skills, collect x amount, beat on hardest etc). Technically anything other than the "game" being focused on COULD lead to more content but something gives me the idea that in today's industry adding trophies is not what is causing time pressure/crunch.....

Edited January 11, 2023 by SpaceIsDandy

[mega-tallica]

I mean, he's not wrong. 

 

Only really his last point I'd disagree with entirely. "It eats resources that could have made the game better". That's definitely a gross exaggeration and it sounds like he may have just got pulled off aside to code trophies for a new Ubisoft game and he's bitter about it because he'd rather be doing something else in the development process so now trophies are suddenly 'bad for gaming'. Trophies are just about the only reason I choose to play games sometimes especially modern games, non-coincidentally, many Ubisoft games would fall into that category.

 

Are trophies really the reason why Ubisoft recycles the same ideas over and over again and this is somehow being used as an excuse as to why modern games are lacking? I'm not buying it at all. How hard is it to code in some trophies? Even easier than recycling the same ideas and resources over and over again with every game like Ubisoft does I'd imagine. That's what's bad about modern gaming; lack of innovation from the developers and Ubisoft is at the top of that heap which makes this whole hot take quite ironic. 

[Fr_0zt]

Badly designed trophies take freedom away from the experience.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Fr_0zt

[siren2010]

My personal opinion is, the trophies are an extra to the games, many times they are fun, sometimes challenging, I personally believe that there are people who after a while are more aware of the trophies than of the history of the game, and that's where it starts to lose the essence of what a game is, I personally do it for fun, I don't do it to compete with anyone, it's a good addition but it's not the main thing in a game.

[proud2bNs]

Well designed trophy lists enhance the experience of the player. They push you to explore more content, make you replay the game (in different, fun ways), add challenges to overcome, let you enjoy side content and secrets you certainly would have skipped, ...

 

If the devs don't put any thoughts into the trophy list, they can absolutely narrow down your experience or even make you hate the game. Especially when the devs made a huge copy paste game with hundreds of boring collectibles or endless repeating content like Ubisoft typically does nowadays and then want you to complete 100% of that for a trophy.

[disaster500]

Obviously I'm biased towards liking trophies, but I think I need more information to understand his argument. It's an interesting discussion though, I don't think I've ever heard anyone have that opinion before.

 

"narrows games down" In what way? I've done so much stuff in games that I wouldn't have if they didn't have a trophy attached to them. They can broaden the experience if you come up with interesting trophies that make you experience everything the game has to offer. I can only see it narrowing games down if the trophy list pushes players towards one specific playstyle or something like that, but it should be very easy to make trophies which don't do that.

 

"disrupts and diverts attention" Is he talking about the players' attention or the devs? The vast majority of players don't care about trophies so that's not much of a point. I have zero experiemce with game development so I can't comment on how it disrupts devs if that's what he means.

 

"eats resources" Once again I can't comment on this. I can't see how simple trophies can be too taxing, idk.

Edited January 11, 2023 by disaster500

[SpaceIsDandy]

8 minutes ago, disaster500 said:

"eats resources" Once again I can't comment on this. I can't see how simple trophies can be too taxing, idk.

 

It does in the same way that ANYTHING and EVERYTHING "eats resources" for example if a company didnt provide heating they would have more resources, if they didn't have a staff to clean the building they would have more resources, if they didnt spend time on designing micro-transactions they would have more resources, if they didnt spend time on trophies they would have more resources 

 

100% technically correct but if they were really "bad for gaming" the industry at large would have dropped them (especially considering trophies make less money than other "optional" parts of a game ie mircotransactions) 

[pavelbagirov]

Trophies sometimes is good when they interesting but 90% will be better without them.Mostly it’s just wasting time and money for the games. Infinite online grinds for nothing. With trophies you also wasting your life and young age, a lot of people become fat and ugly because you need to sit 24/7 and play games in your room. 

[Annoyingtiger888]

4 minutes ago, pavelbagirov said:

Trophies sometimes is good when they interesting but 90% will be better without them.Mostly it’s just wasting time and money for the games. Infinite online grinds for nothing. With trophies you also wasting your life and young age, a lot of people become fat and ugly because you need to sit 24/7 and play games in your room. 

 

People can say the same thing about gaming in general. You're "wasting time and money" by playing games with or without trophies. If you look at it like that, then what's even the point? You play games because they're fun. You try and get trophies because it's fun to do so. Yes, you're technically wasting time and money, but so what? If you have the time and the money to "waste" you're not hurting anyone by doing it. And the fat and ugly thing? Super rude and uncalled for. If you want to look at it like that, you can also get "fat and ugly" from a multitude of things, not just gaming.

[CelestialRequiem]

He's definitely an outlier within gamedev with this logic.

 

Developers often try to leverage the tool to make sure all content is referenced/accessible to the player. Although if I worked at Ubisoft, I'd probably hate trophies too, lol.

[GT__Jedi]

So it there aren't any trophies or achievements, why would we bother to play half of the games out there?

[darkrequiem7]

I'm having a great time just casually playing Skyrim again with no need to chase trophies since I already have 100%. For once I'm going to be able to piss off a couple Daedric lords by not doing what they want for their silly artifact I'll never use anyway, because otherwise you pretty much need all of them to get the collectable trophy.

 

As far as "using resources" I'd say it depends on what the trophy is and how it's tracked. A simple trigger to pop when something happens is probably easier than keeping a running total of 50 kills in one way, 30 kills in another way, 69 kills of a certain enemy, etc. Now with the PS5 tracking that stuff actively it's probably more difficult to code if they weren't planning a "player stat" page already. Then there's the trophy image using an artist's time, but I've seen games use the same image for every single trophy so that's no issue for the lazy developer.

[Property_Damage]

Nintendo believes the same and to a degree, theyre correct

Trophies and achievements forces people to play by someone elses rules then just playing a game and enjoying it organically

now the player who thinks they beat the game see’s a trophy checklist on their profile shamming them saying that oh youre not done, you’re only 12% finished and now they have to play through the game 7 more times 7 different ways while talking to every NPC getting through all they’re bs dialogue, collect 10,000 of every useless item, play with other people online, and half the time some of these trophies are broken and cant even be obtained, extending the devs middle fingers even further to the player base

[pinkrobot_pb]

You heard it folks. Without trophies or achievements: Far Cry Primal would have had an original map, instead of the Far Cry 4 map with some different objects and textures.

[Speling_Expirt]

He's right on one thing - it is an unpopular opinion. 

 

Trophies has opened up my view on all types of games I used to scoff at once upon a time. I'll give everything a chance now (most things not those 'stroke' games for example)

 

EDIT: I'd be annoyed at putting 50,000 collectibles in a Ubisoft game too but I wouldn't slam the community that you're selling to

 

Edited January 11, 2023 by ZedsDeadStevo
Extra info

[unCorey]

When you see his work and the list of trophies they make in ubisoft games it doesn't surprise me that he says that.. they have 0 creativity, at no time do they question themselves to make it fun and challenging for the player

[pinkrobot_pb]

17 minutes ago, Property_Damage said:

... and now they have to play through the game 7 more times 7 different ways while talking to every NPC getting through all they’re bs dialogue, collect 10,000 of every useless item, play with other people online, and half the time some of these trophies are broken and cant even be obtained, extending the devs middle fingers even further to the player base

 

You are approaching this guy's view from a jaded trophy hunter's perspective. All the things you mention could be easily solved if the dev (and this guy is a dev, albeit one who does not hold that kind of power) would design better trophy lists.

 

Also, who besides us 1 or 2 percent of all gamers acually cares about trophies? Nobody of my real life friends are trophy hunters and none of them care about a game's trophy requirements at all. They play through a game's story until they are bored. Sometimes they even make it to the credits. But they mostly play competitively online. The only progression they care about is leveling up and getting better stats and gear. They could not care less if a game's trophy list was at 1% or 99%.

 

The only valid complaint could be that platform holders are still forcing devs/publishers to incorporate achievements when in all reality they have failed for more than 10 years to grasp the imagination of any significant part of the gaming public. I honestly thought platform holders like Sony and Microsoft would drop the requirement this generation (but am happy they didn't).

[StewartBros]

12 hours ago, pavelbagirov said:

With trophies you also wasting your life and young age, a lot of people become fat and ugly because you need to sit 24/7 and play games in your room. 

 

This argument could be applied to multiple pastimes.  Are you wasting your life if you like to just sit and read books in your free time?  Are you wasting your life if you sit and watch movies, binge a Netflix show, or maintain your garden?

 

Which brings me to....

 

12 hours ago, Annoyingtiger888 said:

Yes, you're technically wasting time and money, but so what? If you have the time and the money to "waste" you're not hurting anyone by doing it.

 

Exactly.  When all is said and done, it's ultimately your time, your money, and your life.  You should be free to do whatever you want with your time, as long as no-one is being adversely affected by it.

Edited January 12, 2023 by StewartBros